


The Lost

by VeritySilvers



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Families of Choice, Family, Gen, Kidnapping, Mystery, Teamwork, Undercover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-30
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeritySilvers/pseuds/VeritySilvers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane Foster's niece Maddie is sixteen days old when she is stolen out of her crib.  The Avengers won't stand for this, and are faced with human trafficking rings, undercover assignments, and far too many moral dilemmas as they investigate and attempt to bring her home again.</p><p> - This fic is officially abandoned; my apologies.  Chapter 12, Author's Note, explains why.-</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Jane Foster

# Prologue

It’s Jane Foster’s first time in the Tower, and she’s nervous.

She can’t help but think of it as the Tower, capitalized and everything, because it’s been looming in her head for as long as she’s known of it.  Stark Tower, barely finished and half-destroyed, rebuilt and rechristened and now home to the Avengers.  Everyone calls it just the Tower, though, and even in a city as jaded as New York, people talk of it with awe and speculation in their voices.

She shouldn’t be nervous visiting the Tower.  She’s invited, first off, so it’s not like she’s breaking and entering.  And second, Thor’s been staying there, when he’s been on Earth, and since he’s her boyfriend, she’s had a standing invitation to visit for practically as long as the Tower’s been inhabited.  Third, the Avengers work for SHIELD – at least, mostly – and she’s sort of working for SHIELD too, or at least being funded by them.  So she has every right to visit the Tower.

And how weird is it that her boyfriend is the god of thunder and only occasionally on Earth, and that she works for a super secret government agency who has her researching ways to travel between worlds? 

The Tower can’t be weirder than her life, at least. 

Jane’s still nervous, though, and wishes she’d accepted that drink on the flight over.  Not that it would have helped, but Darcy always called liquor liquid courage, and God, could she use a bit of extra spine about now.

The elevator glides smoothly up past the last bit of the interior wall, and light floods through the glass front.  Jane squints, shields her eyes, and looks out into the setting sun.  New York is spread before her, painted in orange and red from the last bit of evening light.  It’s a breathtaking view, especially considering that she’s been stuck in northern Siberia for the past four months staring at tundra, tundra, and occasionally tundra.  The city rises up all around her, and then beneath her as the elevator continues to ascend up the side of the Tower.

The city’s healed, she thinks, looking out over the reconstructed streets and skyscrapers rapidly shrinking beneath her.  It’s been over a year since the invasion, and Stark Industries had been nothing if not generous in aiding in disaster relief.  New skyscrapers stand next to repaired buildings, replaced streetlights prepare to flicker on to guard against nightfall, and roads are patched and repaved.  It’s hard to tell that the Battle for New York was fought on the blocks Jane looks across.

The elevator starts to slow, now, approaching the top of the Tower.  Jane catches herself smoothing down the shirt she wears, clutching at the bag slung over her shoulders.  She straightens her shoulders deliberately.

“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” she says aloud to soothe herself.  “I’m an invited guest, and it’s just like hanging out with my boyfriend’s friends.  Right?”

“Perfectly correct, Dr. Foster,” a smooth British voice assures her from the speakers above the elevator’s buttons.  Jane considers it a heroic feat of self-control when she does not scream from surprise.  “I’ve notified the others of your arrival, and they should be up to meet you shortly.”  The elevator comes to a gentle stop.  “Welcome to the Sky Lounge,” the voice continues as the doors whisper open.  “Would you care for a drink?”

“No, thank you,” Jane says, and she grips her carry-on roller bag with a steady hand and pulls it off the elevator with her.  Because she’s at least as fascinated by the voice as she was surprised by it, she asks, “Are you an AI program?”

“Indeed I am, Dr. Foster,” the disembodied voice confirms, and the elevator shuts smartly behind her.  She can’t quite pinpoint a source for the voice now, and suspects the whole lounge – which is gorgeous, expansive and sprawling, filled with couches that look far more comfortable than airline seats and have a better view of the city than even the elevator – is probably wired with speakers.  “I respond to JARVIS, and would be happy to answer any questions you have throughout your stay.”

Computer science isn’t her strongest point, but she’s worked with enough technology to be interested.  “Are you one of Stark’s technologies?” she asks, and does her best not to worry about how no one is yet here to greet her.  Thor, at least, knew she was coming, and she’s been sure there’d been someone else at the edge of the screen when she’d talked with him as she’d finished with Customs…

“I am,” JARVIS tells her.  “A work constantly in progress, if you will.”

There’s a clattering of shoes from a doorway to her left, and voices bantering back and forth in a kind of rhythm.  “Ah, the troops arrive,” JARVIS says, and though the voice is certainly just programmed, it sounds nearly amused.

Jane takes a deep breath and turns toward the door as it is flung open.

Thor, thank God, is the first one she sees.  “Jane!” he says, and he’s clearly delighted to see her from the way his smile spreads across his face in an instant.  In three long strides, he’s crossed the room to her side; strong hands grab her waist and lift her up, and she’s spun in a joyous circle before he pulls her in for a hug.

She’s grinning, she knows, but she can’t help it – he’s so obviously happy that her fears are eased.  So she smiles and burrows her head into his shoulder, into the leather and metal of what she still thinks of as his informal uniform, the one he wears when he’s not expecting the end of the world, wrapping her arms around his waist and breathing him in.

“I missed you,” she hears him say quietly into her hair, and she tightens her hold on him and shuts her eyes.

“Missed you too,” she says, and it’s true: it’s been four months since she went out to that research station in Siberia, and another two before it since he’s been able to visit her.  Even then, it had been just a quick day together in Norway, where Thor had barely turned any heads as they’d walked through the streets down to the docks and spent the day exploring the older parts of the fishing village.

“Ahem,” says a voice from somewhere behind her, and Thor’s arms loosen around her.  Jane opens her eyes and turns to see a group of people standing together by the door.  Most of them are smiling, but that doesn’t make her any less nervous, and she’s glad Thor’s still touching her, his arms still around her as he turns to see them as well.

“My friends,” he says, the rather old-fashioned term sounding affectionate and habitual, “this is Jane.”

“I kind of assumed that, what with the hugging,” the man at the center of the group says, and Jane realizes that it’s Tony Stark.  He’s shorter than she expected, in person, and a bit older, and while she can see traces of the exuberant spirit the media love in him, he almost seems contained: a compact bundle of energy, rocking back and forth on his feet as he studies her.  “You’re shorter than I expected,” he tells her.

“So are you,” she says back before she can censor herself, but he doesn’t seem to take offense.

Instead, he turns to the woman at his side.  “They always say that,” he complains.  “Always.  What is it, I’m tiny compared to the suit?”

The woman merely smiles at Jane.  She’s a tall, classy-looking strawberry blonde in killer heels and a business suit.  “Hello,” she says, and her eyes sparkle.  “I’m Pepper Potts. The short one-” 

“Hey!”

“-Is Tony Stark.  And I’m sure as soon as he remembers his manners,” her look at him is pointed, “he’ll welcome you and introduce everyone.”

“Make me,” Tony dares her, but there’s affection in the challenge rather than annoyance.  He looks at Jane.  “Want a drink?”

She finds that yes, she does.  “Sure,” she says, and looks up at Thor again, because his arm is snug around her shoulder and that’s a comforting weight. 

He smiles down at her, at once tender and proud and delighted with her, and a little hum of happiness settles into her heart and stays there.  “I will introduce you, if Tony will not,” he tells her, and then takes her hand and leads her forward as though she were descending a staircase into a formal ball.  “Captain Steve Rogers, an honorable warrior,” he says, stopping in front of the first man he comes to.

 _Captain America_ , Jane thinks, and she remembers her older brother’s action figures and trading cards and drawn-out battles in the backyard involving cardboard boxes, nerf guns, and the neighbor’s dog.  “Pleased to meet you,” she says, a little too quickly, and her cheeks hurt from smiling.

He’s tall, and nearly as muscled as Thor.  It should make her feel intimidated and very small, but the smile he gives her is warm and friendly.  “Miss Foster,” he says, and shakes her hand.  “It’s an honor.”

“That’s my line,” she very nearly blurts, and manages to censor herself only because the man with rumpled hair next to him interrupts her.

“It’s actually Dr. Foster, isn’t it?” he asks, a bit hesitantly.  “Astrophysics, right?”

“Yes, actually,” Jane says, but she’s still smiling at Steve Rogers because God, her brother would kill to be in her shoes right now and she’s going to text him the instant she can.  “But that’s all right,” she quickly reassures Captain America, who winced at getting her title wrong.

The man who remembered her doctorate beams at her.  “I’m Bruce Banner,” he tells her, a bit eagerly.  “I read your last paper, the one on neutron star radiation, and –”

The name clicks in her head, enough to have her jerk out of childhood awe.  She turns toward him, thrilled.  “Wait, wait,” she says, “You’re Dr. Banner; of _course_ you’re Dr. Banner, you put out that paper on the gamma radiation theory with black holes-”

They grin at each other in perfect scientific excitement, and both start to talk about questions they want to ask each other in such detail that for a few brief seconds, everyone else stares at them.

Jane breaks off with a nervous chuckle as she realizes the rest of the group has no idea about astral radiation and even less about low-energy gamma radiation as it relates to wandering objects and black holes, and she really does want to make a good impression on these people.

“Well,” Tony says, standing off to one side with two drinks.  “That was enlightening.”  He says it so simply she’s not sure if he’s sarcastic or not, but she thinks she sees a glimmer of respect in his eye as he hands her a drink. 

“My Jane is smart,” Thor insists, and looks down at her proudly.  “Brilliant,” he adds, and she can’t help but be pleased.

“Sometimes,” she admits, and looks back at Dr. Banner.  “I’d love to collaborate sometime,” she tells him.  “I don’t have a lab set up here, but-”

“I do,” the dark-haired doctor answers with a smile.  “We’ll find a time.  I look forward to it.”

“And this,” Thor says, steering her towards the next man, “is Clint Barton.  A very fine warrior.”

Clint’s smile is easy, his handshake firm but not crushing, and it’s a very big relief to find he appears normal – no childhood hero, no scientific legend, no billionaire vigilante, just a man she’s never met before with well-muscled arms and an easy-going stance.  “Hi,” Jane says, because she’s run out of things to say.

“Hi,” he says back.  “Hope you had a good flight over.”

She blinks, because it’s an innocuous thing to say, and decides she likes his smile.  “Yeah,” she agrees.  “Wasn’t too bad at all, really, and it’s good to be out of Siberia before winter hits.”  She takes a sip of the drink Tony gave her, and nearly chokes.

“Oh, it’s a bit strong,” Tony mentions with a grin, handing Pepper a drink.  “Anyone else want one?”

No one says no, and Thor steers her towards the last member of the group.  “This is Natasha Romanov,” he says, and squeezes Jane’s shoulder.  “She’s strong like you.”

Stronger, Jane thinks, judging from the quick handshake Natasha offers her.  She’s gorgeous, petite and clear-skinned, with wavy red hair and a body that seems to be all curves and lean muscles under a tidy shirt and jeans.  But she’s at least around Jane’s height, and that puts her at ease among the group of tall, muscled men and the stunning blonde, all of whom tower over her.

“Hi,” Jane says again, because she still can’t think of what else to say.

Natasha’s lips curve.  “Hi,” she returns.  “We’re a bit much all at once, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” she agrees, with feeling, and she can feel Thor shaking as he represses laughter at her emphatic agreement.

“We had to come up and see the girl who tamed the god of thunder,” Tony says carelessly from where he’s at the bar.

“She’s hardly a girl, Tony,” Pepper says drily, and she moves away from the little group to help herself to the first drink he’s made.

“And I’m hardly tamed,” Thor adds, sounding a bit miffed.

“You didn’t deny being the god of thunder, though,” Captain America – Steve, Jane reminds herself, she’s not allowed to fangirl over him – teases him.

“Well, I was,” Thor says right back, unapologetically.  “It’s not my fault humanity is no longer as enlightened as they once were.”

“What, enlightened enough to believe Asgardians were gods?” Clint asks, taking a seat at the bar besides Pepper.  “Some enlightenment.”

“It’s hardly my fault Midgardians are so… fragile,” Thor protests, but Jane can hear the laughter in his voice, the humor that so very much demonstrates the difference between him and his brother.  “When confronted with that which outshines you at every turn, is it any wonder you considered us gods?”

“Just because you were the only one of us left standing after the Eckthanoi exploded that egg-thing,” Steve mutters, but it sounds like an old argument and Thor only laughs.

Dr. Banner coughs something that might have been “puny” and might have been an actual cough, it’s hard to tell.  But it sends the group into gales of laughter, and just like that they’re a relaxed group of friends, leaning together on the bar and chattering back and forth on any number of topics.  Jane sticks near Thor, both for the comfort of his presence in this group of mostly strangers and because it’s been six months, damn it, she’ll stand next her boyfriend if she wants to.  She finds, after thirty minutes, that she’s forgot her nerves in lieu of complimenting Pepper on her shoes, discussing black holes with Dr. Banner, and defending Thor’s hair – of all things – to Tony.

She’s laughing when her phone rings, sitting perched on Thor’s lap and unworried about cutting off the circulation to his legs because God, her boyfriend’s thighs are like small trees and she’s clearly the luckiest woman in the room because of that.  Tony’s standing beside Pepper, who’s sitting on a stool and leaning against the bar; Clint’s sitting next to her, elbows resting behind him on the bar, with Natasha perched up on the bar itself on his other side.  Captain America – Steve, she reminds herself again, but his hair is _exactly like_ the hair of the four action figures of him that Rick had kept well into his preteens, and Jane’s having a hard time thinking of him as Steve the man rather than Captain America the action hero – Captain America is leaning against the bar beside Natasha, beer rolling back and forth in his hands as he debates some kind of martial art, she’s not sure which, with her.  Dr. Banner is sitting on the chair next to the bar, because he’s talking with her on her last paper and it’s absolutely fascinating to discuss the possible implications of astral radiation on interstellar travel with someone who understands the theory and doesn’t believe attempting to recreate bridges between worlds means she needs her head examined.

So when her phone rings and she fumbles it out of her jacket pocket to check that it’s not some kind of emergency in any of the three labs she’s currently running projects with, Jane’s laughing and having the time of her life.  When she sees her brother’s name on the caller ID, she can’t help but accept the call.

“Rick!” she says, and she’s laughing still, “you’ll never believe where I –”

His words stop her laughter cold, have her smile freezing into brittleness on her face.

“Maddie’s gone,” he says, and Jane’s world stops, crystallizes around the fact that her heart’s turned to lead in her chest. 

“What?” she repeats dumbly.

“Maddie’s gone,” Rick says again, voice anguished and cracking.  “Maddie’s gone, and the cops say it’s a kidnapping, and Jane, _Maddie’s gone_.”

“What?” she says, and this time her voice has gone sharp, shrill, a little panicked.  It’s a noticeable enough difference that the others are turning towards her, quieting down; she barely notices.  She feels Thor’s hands on her back, and barely registers that he’s steadying her as she slides off his lap to pace towards the window as she talks.  “Rick, what’s happened?  What’s going on?”

His words are dull, almost rhythmic.  “Andrea put Maddie down for a nap at two,” he tells her, and it already sounds like a story he’s had to repeat too many times.  “Maddie’s bedroom is the little side room, remember?  She put Maddie down for a nap.  She was wearing the yellow outfit you sent her, the one with the snaps and the duck on the front.  Maddie went right to sleep.  Andrea set out the baby monitor, and took the other set out into the backyard so she could rake out the leaves.  Wasn’t outside for more than a half hour.  She came back in, and Maddie was gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?” Jane asks.  Her stomach’s gone tight and cold, and her hands are tense.  She paces in jerky steps up and down the expansive windows, oblivious to the darkening skyline and the jewel-like display of lights coming on across the city’s skyscrapers.  “She’s sixteen days old, Rick, she can’t wander off.  Can she?”

“No, she can’t.”  Rick swallows.  “The front door was open, and Andrea couldn’t find her.  She called the cops.  She called the cops,” he repeats carefully, “and they came out and I came home from work, and Jane, they said it’s a kidnapping.”

There’s quick motion behind her, and Jane only realizes that she’s fallen to her knees when there are large, steadying hands on her shoulders, a warm body crouched behind her.  “What do you mean?”

“They said it’s a kidnapping – that someone came and took her.  They’ve put out an Amber Alert, but they won’t tell us anything else.  I called Mom – Andrea’s called her folks – and I just…”  He sounds helpless, her older brother, and it scares her, has her shuddering against Thor’s hands.  “Just wanted to let you know.”

“I’ll come out,” Jane babbles, desperate to do something.  “I’ll move my ticket to as soon as I can.  I’ll come out and help.”

“You don’t have to,” Rick starts, and she cuts him off.

“Damn it, Rick, she’s my _niece_ ,” she says, and feels tears threaten.  “I’ll come out, and I’ll do whatever I can.  Help somehow.  I don’t know.”

“I don’t know what to do,” her brother admits wearily.  “Mom’s driving up, and Andrea’s folks – I don’t know what to do.”

Jane gulps in a deep breath.  “We’ll find her,” she promises.  “I’ll get a ticket, a flight, and I’ll come out and help, and we’ll find her.”

“Okay,” he says, and he sounds both defeated and relieved.  “Okay.  I’ll tell Andrea.  Call when you get a flight.”

“Call if you hear anything,” she counters, and makes him promise before she says goodbye and disconnects.

She drops the phone, puts her hands up to cover her face, and desperately tries to not cry.  Thor’s hands are gentle on her shoulders, and the entire room is filled with a hushed silence which seems to echo off the windows and rebound onto Jane until the entire world is focused down onto the feel of her hands on her face and Thor’s hands on her shoulders.

“Jane,” he says softly.  “What’s happened?”  And then, one of many reasons she loves him, “How can I help?”

She swallows hard, takes a deep breath, and uncovers her face.  She pushes herself up from the carpet to find that the whole group is staring at her, everything from genuine concern to polite confusion on their faces.

“I have a niece,” she manages, deciding that’s the best way to start.  “My brother Rick, in Seattle – I’ve told you about them,” she adds to Thor, sees him nod, though the worry doesn’t leave his eyes.  “She’s sixteen days old.  My niece, I mean.  Her name’s Maddie.  That’s why I’m back in the States, to go out and see her.”  She takes a deep breath.  “My sister-in-law put her down for a nap today, and she got kidnapped.  Maddie,” she clarifies, realizing she’s not explaining well.  She presses a hand to her head, tries for clarity.  “Not Andrea.  Maddie’s gone.”

Someone – she thinks Clint – swears; the polite confusion has melted away into honest worry and sympathetic  alarm.  Pepper’s rushed forward, put a hand on her arm, eyes full of horror.  “Seattle?” Tony says, and the whole way he’s standing has changed.  “When?”

“Um.”  She shuffles time zones in her head, from Siberia to New York to Seattle, does the math.  “Three hours ago.”

“How far to Seattle from here?” Thor asks, because of course Thor has no idea where Seattle is, but he’s still going to help her get there.

“Across the continent,” Dr. Banner says grimly, hands balled into fists at his side.  “You’ll have to take a plane.  Tony?”

“Got that covered,” the man says, already in motion.  “You’re still packed, right, Jane?  Clint, you know where everything is?”  He opens a small drawer under the bar, picks something out of the jumble of items within it. 

Clint catches it when it’s tossed to him.  “I’ll warm her up,” he says, and catches Natasha’s eye.  “Grab my stuff?” he asks, and doesn’t wait to see her nod before he turns and disappears up a set of stairs behind the entertainment center.

Thor looks down at her, and frames her face in his hands.  “We’ll get you to Seattle,” he promises her, blue eyes serious.  “We’ll find Maddie.  I promise.”

“Thank you,” she says, because it’s all she can say.

“Dinner,” Pepper says briskly, and squeezes her hand before moving away.  “I’ll pack dinner.  Tony, you’ll want – ”

“Yeah,” he agrees to her unspoken question, and Jane can see that he’s fiddling with some kind of holographic interface, bringing up data and discarding it with quick flicks of his hand.  “Good.”

Natasha slips by quietly, moving quickly and with purpose, disappearing down the elevator.  Steve is following her, but he stops to squeeze Jane’s shoulder, a brief reassurance, and then he’s gone.

Jane takes a deep breath, decides she needs to panic for just a minute, and shuts her eyes tightly and hugs Thor.  He holds onto her until she’s sure she’s not going to cry, and when she’s opened her eyes, Dr. Banner is rolling her luggage awkwardly up the same stairway Clint took and Thor is the only one left in the room with her.

“We will get you to Seattle,” he tells her seriously, “and we will help you get Maddie back.”

“Thanks,” she says, and then blurts, “She’s two weeks old, Thor, who would steal a baby?  What would they want with her?”

He brings her hands up, and kisses her knuckles slowly, eyes troubled.  “We’ll help you get her back,” he repeats.  “I won’t say to not worry, because I know how precious she is to you.  But we will do all we can, and I won’t,” he emphasizes, “leave you to face this alone.”

Jane lets out a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding.  “Thanks,” she repeats, and then, because despite her shock, the image is too bizarre for her already misfiring brain to handle, she giggles weakly.  “Have you ever even been on a plane?”

He doesn’t look offended, or even confused, and his smile makes his eyes brighten.  “I have,” he says, and kisses her knuckles again.  “And for my lady Jane, I will suffer one again.”

“It’s an awful nice bird, you have to admit,” Tony says, sauntering into the room once more.  He’s carrying a bag, and his saunter, Jane notes, is a bit less carefree than it was twenty minutes earlier.  He tosses the bag at them; Jane ducks, and Thor lets go of her to catch it.  “Pack what you need, thunder boy, take-off is in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?” Jane echoes.

Thor’s smile spreads, and he gives her the little half-bow she’s come to recognize as his farewell.  “It is,” he admits, “a very nice bird.”

“Come on,” Tony says, as Pepper emerges from the door with a box that smells fantastic in her hands, “I’ll show you up.”

Which is how, fifty minutes after she meets the Avengers and four hours after she’s back on American soil for the first time in months, Jane finds herself sitting in Stark Industry’s private jet – well, jet isn’t really the word for something that takes off vertically out of the Tower, but it’s the closest word Jane can find to describe it – with neatly packed chicken fettuccine in a box beside her.  She can see straight through from her spot on the couch – the plane has _couches_ – to the cockpit, where Clint is sitting on one side and Natasha the other, wearing the ridiculously large headphones pilots wear and competently turning the plane’s nose towards the glow of the just-set sun in the west.

Thor is sitting beside her, wordlessly, holding her hand and letting her draw support from his solid presence.  Steve is pacing, twelve steps forward and twelve steps back, up and down between the couches, occasionally looking out the windows and constantly looking back at Tony.  Tony and Dr. Banner are sitting at the desk that covers the back of the cabin, and data flows over the desk in front of them like electronic water.

“There’s an Amber Alert out,” Dr. Banner says, and opens his hand over the information to have it grow larger.  There’s a picture of Maddie, full color, in the center of it.  Her name is printed in bold letters across the top, her date of birth across the bottom.  “It was fast work, too – I’d say within an hour of her disappearance.”

“No vehicle sighted, no subject description, no leads,” Tony says, and it almost makes Jane despair except for the long exhale he gives right afterwards, the way he cracks his knuckles.  “Let’s see if we can’t change that.”

Jane tightens her grip on Thor’s left hand, sees him tighten his grip on the hammer he’s holding in his right hand.

 _I’m coming, Rick,_ she thinks, and shuts her eyes.  _And God, we’re going to get Maddie back.  Look who’s coming with me._


	2. Section 1: Steve

# Section 1: Steve

The last time he’d been to Seattle, it had been 1942. He’d performed in a theater he’s pretty sure is long gone, stayed overnight at Fort Lewis to the south after a second, soldier-only show, and had been on his way to Portland the next morning.

Steve doesn’t really remember much about Seattle. “I’m fairly sure that wasn’t there the last time I was here,” he murmurs as they approach the city. There’s a spire rising out of the city, just north of downtown, which is full of glossy skyscrapers and a few old-fashioned buildings that strike some kind of chord in his memory.

“It’s called the Space Needle,” Natasha says absently, her hands moving across the flight board with surety and skill. “It was built for the World’s Fair, back in the… sixties, I think?”

“Big Seattle symbol,” Clint agrees, and he’s prepping for landing already. “Lots of tourists, things like that.”

“Ever been?” Steve asks.

Clint gives a half-shrug. “Who has the time?” he asks, and then says something into his radio about clearance.

Steve shakes his head, but he’s smiling. He likes Clint and Natasha, and he doesn’t think it’s just a holdover from the fact that they were really his first team, back when Loki threatened New York, Clint rained arrows from above the battlefield, and Natasha covered his back in the ground war that followed. They’re easy for him to work with because unlike everyone else on the team, they understand that they’re soldiers. They understand how Steve thinks, about civilians and collateral damage and what’s acceptable to risk or not.

Plus, neither of them will stop to argue in the middle of battle unless it’s really, really important, unlike other Avengers Steve could name, and Steve knows enough to trust that when they pull away, crossing lines that weren’t meant to be crossed and taking matters into their own hands, something’s gone drastically wrong. He’d trust either of them with his back, and has, too many times to count.

They’re not like his old team, of course – his old team, much as he loved them, was never quite as deadly nor as competent. Nor, a tiny voice in the back of his head points out, as damaged. But he likes working with them, as dangerous and hard as they are: they aren’t gods from another world, billionaires playing with advanced technology Steve still doesn’t completely understand, or radiated scientists with hugely over-powered alter-egos. 

Sometimes he wonders what made them into agents of SHIELD, where their deadly talents came from, because he knows that they’re a step above the already elite SHIELD agents. SHIELD’s got files on them, of course, and some of them are probably cleared for his eyes, but Steve hasn’t read them – or the files he’s sure Tony’s dug up on them, classified and sealed away, because Tony’s invasive like that. But Steve trusts himself, in a way that the modern world doesn’t seem to anymore, and he trusts that actions speed louder than words: records don’t show instinct and feeling. 

So he’s fairly sure that aside from SHIELD, Clint’s seen some kind of military service and Natasha might have. Clint carries himself like a soldier – Army or Marines, Steve thinks, and wonders which branch and how many years and how much of his talent was learned there and how much is simply Clint or came from someplace earlier than boot camp. Natasha’s harder to read – military training, yes, Steve would bet on that, but he doesn’t see her as a veteran. Clint calls her a spy, not a soldier; but then again, she’s Russian, and Steve’s knowledge of the Russian army comes from the Soviets in the forties, so he’s not as sure with her as he is with Clint. She’s harder to read, anyway, but she follows orders with an ease that indicates some kind of familiarity with military procedure.

They’re soldiers, though, and there’s something to be said for the camaraderie that’s shared while field-stripping guns for cleaning. Steve likes that.

“How much time until landing?” he asks.

“Three minutes,” Clint says, and reaches over his head to start the sequence.

Steve turns and returns to the main cabin. “Strap in for landing,” he says, and then winces, because he sees that Jane’s asleep, her head pillowed on Thor’s shoulder.  
Bruce sees his glance. “She’s bouncing through a lot of time zones,” he explains, even as Thor straps her in gently without waking her. “Siberia to New York, and then to Seattle? Her sleep schedule’s going to be screwed up for a while.”

“And this isn’t going to help, this mess,” Tony agrees, taking a seat himself. He looks personally irritated, as though someone decided to annoy him specifically by kidnapping the daughter of a friend’s girlfriend’s brother. 

“Find anything important?” Steve asks, sitting on the couch and pulling out his out seatbelt from the cushions.

“I think so,” Tony says, and shares a glance with Bruce. His face changes, goes from thoughtful to speculative all in a blink. “I figure we’ll get everyone into the hotel, get thunder boy here some normal looking clothes and a car for Jane, let them go off to see her brother. The rest of us can do some work in the meantime.”

“Any leads?” Steve asks again, hoping for a more direct answer.

Tony, of course, ignores him. “Probably shouldn’t show up as the Avengers, either. There’s no helping some of us, of course,” and he preens in his seat, self-satisfied and smug as he waves a martini to encompass the interior of the private jet. 

“Of course,” Bruce agrees drily. “Billionaire playboy philanthropist that you are, you’re a bit hard to miss.”

“Right. You too, Captain Red White and Blue. Figure you’ll be able to hide if you’re out of that uniform, but not if you’re being introduced with the rest of us. And as for you…” Tony scrutinizes Thor. “How much does her family know?”

“Some,” he admits. “I have met her brother, and sister-in-law. When they announced that she was with child. They… suspected, but I do not think they ever dug deeply enough to confirm who I was.”

Steve considers that. “Go with Jane tonight,” he tells him, and Tony nods. “They won’t think too much about you, not at a time like this. Play normal.”

“Remember what I taught you,” Tony adds, and there’s a slight jerk as the plane bumps down onto the runway. “No babbling about fascinating Midgardian technologies.”

Thor gives a very half-hearted glare. “I am not stupid, Tony,” he says, but he’s too tired to even sound cross.

“Tomorrow,” Steve continues, as though he weren’t interrupted, “they’ll probably figure everything out if the rest of us show up together, but they shouldn’t have to focus on that tonight.”

“Good plan,” Tony agrees, and gestures towards the cockpit with his martini. “They’ll be my minions, I think; that ought to keep them covered and SHIELD happy.”

Steve ignores him – he’s found it best to sometimes simply tune Tony out. Bruce gives him a little grin, and Steve can’t help but roll his eyes in return. Thor, though, gently wakes up Jane, and the tenderness in his hands as he brushes his fingers across her cheek makes Steve feel awkward, almost voyeuristic. He has no idea where they are, relationship-wise – Tony’s got a betting pool going on whether or not they’re even sleeping together yet, but then Tony has a betting pool going on pretty much anything he can think of, so that’s not saying much.

But Thor’s a giant of a man – a god among men, more or less literally – and Jane’s a small woman, with a petite frame and delicate features. Seeing them together is a sharp contrast, and it’s very nearly humbling to watch such a powerful man treat her so carefully, as though she’s cherished and precious and too good for him. 

It makes Steve’s heart ache, in a good kind of way that makes him respect Thor even more than he did already. It makes his fingers itch for a pencil and a sketchpad and enough time to capture that dynamic in the man’s powerful build. And, as Jane yawns and curls up against him as she awakens, perfectly comfortable with her small body against his, it makes Steve respect her, for holding such power over Thor and using it so carefully.

“Seattle already?” she asks, and yawns again, putting a hand to half-mussed hair.

“Yes,” he says, and presses a kiss to her temple. It’s a chaste, almost reverent kiss. “Tony and Steve have come up with a plan.”

“Mostly me,” Tony clarifies, already unbuckled from the couch and standing as the plane taxies down the private runway. 

Steve stands as well. “We thought it might be best if you and Thor went ahead tonight,” he says, and glances at Bruce. 

Bruce picks up the thread without question. Jane was most comfortable with the fellow scientist, so in Steve’s mind, Bruce is the one she’ll trust best of the rest of them. “We’ll get some clothes for Thor that aren’t so… Thor-like,” he says with a bit of a grin. “Let you two see your brother, figure out what you want to do. The rest of us will get a hotel room – we’ve done some searches online while we were in the air, and we’ll lay some groundwork tonight. Tomorrow, if you’d like, we could meet your brother and his wife, or at least some of us can, and see if he’d like our aid.”

Jane looks both relieved and grateful. “All right,” she says, and looks at Thor. “I know where he lives – we can rent a car, drive over –”

“Car rented,” Tony interrupts, and hands her a slip of paper with a flourish. “And it, along with some clothes for the lightning king, will be waiting the moment you step off of the plane.”

Jane’s smile is tired, but still bright enough to light up the cabin. “Must be nice to be rich,” she says, and hides another yawn. But she’s waking up, standing and stretching out muscles.

“That’s my cell phone,” Tony tells her, referring to the paper in her hand. “And where we’ll be staying. Give a call if you need a place to crash tonight, or if you’ll be at your brothers. I’ll talk with you tomorrow about a few ideas we’ve got.”

“Okay.” And she takes Thor’s hand in hers. “Need anything from me?”

“I think we’ve got most of it off the internet,” Bruce says apologetically. “I’ll call you if we can’t find something.”

Jane recites off her cell phone number as the plane comes to a stop. There’s no flight attendant – not on an unscheduled, emergency departure – so Steve opens up the hatch and folds the stairs down to the runway. Seattle’s a compact city, he remembers, seeing the hills around them scattered with pinpoints of light from houses and buildings, all scrunched close together as though they were huddling above the water for warmth.

There’s a sleek dark car waiting at the edge of the jetway, and a limo just past that. Jane shakes her head as she steps off the plane. “Must be nice,” she repeats to herself, and Thor mutters something in her ear that has her smile stretching wide across her face.

They disappear off into the night in minutes, and what little Steve can see of Jane’s driving has him nodding, unworried about her skill. (Thor is an abysmal driver; if she’d been too tired to drive, Steve would have volunteered to chauffeur them.) Tony makes a beeline for the limo, where the driver greets him by name and ushers him into the back of the vehicle with polite courtesy.

Steve helps the others bring down the rest of the luggage, and helps the driver load it into the limo’s expansive trunk, before he joins them in the back. Tony raps the window once everyone is sitting, and then turns to the mini-bar. “Drinks?” he asks.

Only Natasha takes him up on the offer, and she stretches booted feet out in front of her as she carefully sips at the champagne he passes her. “What have you found?” she asks.

“Lots,” Tony says smugly. “But I want to have a real meeting once we’re settled. I’ve got some things to show you.”

“We’ve made some progress,” Bruce tells Natasha quietly. “There are still a lot of questions, but the police have assigned a good detective, so everything’s heading the right direction there. Tony has some theories we can look into.”

Natasha thanks him, leans her head back against her seat and shuts her eyes. Steve wants to do the same – it’s late here, he thinks, and there’s a time difference from New York that’ll throw him off more in a day or two – but he instead stares out the tinted windows as they turn onto the freeway. 

Why kidnap a baby? He frowns at the lights as they flash by. It’s been puzzling in his mind since Jane’s broken explanation. Ransom? He remembers the Lindbergh case, what a big deal kidnapping a rich kid can cause. But Jane’s a scientist, and he doesn’t know what her brother does. Rich enough to have his daughter stolen for money? It doesn’t feel right.

What do you do with a baby? Children can be farmed out, he knows, conditioned and trained and turned into workers and spies and whatever else their caretaker desires. But to take a baby for that? It’d involve years of set-up and child-rearing before the training could truly even start. It’s a long gamble and a ridiculously high lead-time. School-age children would be better for that…

He frowns again. There’s always the violent, too, though he doesn’t want to consider that. The evil, who would take a baby from her crib because they could, because they are powerful and she is not. But he doesn’t want to think about that, because he wants to believe that the baby is alive.

The hotel they arrive at is tall and glossy – not half as tall as the Tower, of course, but still impressive. Tony has them checked in with a wave of his hand, and within ten minutes, their luggage is being delivered to the penthouse suite and the team is making their way to the large wooden table in front of the window.

They sit at the table without much thought, just as though this were a mission briefing in SHIELD’s conference room: Natasha sits with Clint on her left, because she trusts him more than the others, and Bruce on her right, because she is not afraid of him any longer. Tony’s place is next to Bruce, because he likes to be able to poke and prod at the scientist while he thinks, and Steve is next to Tony because sometimes Tony needs someone stronger than him to shout his ideas down. There’s a gap between Steve and Clint, Thor’s place, because Thor thinks Steve honorable and Clint a great deal of fun.

They leave Thor’s place blank, and the team sits without fully realizing that they’re approaching this like a mission. Steve picks up on it, though, and a smile tugs at his lips: he’s grown observant, he thinks, more so now than before he had frozen, and it never fails to surprise him what he can notice just by paying a bit of attention. “So, Tony,” he says, because he’s the unofficial leader and he knows it, “what do you have for us?”

Tony’s set some kind of device on the table, and now he activates it. The table fills with holographic information, pictures and words and maps. “Madeline Rebecca Foster,” Tony says, and plucks a picture of an infant out of the mess of data. He enlarges it: she’s a typical baby, Steve thinks, all toothless mouth and round cheeks, and obviously well-loved in little green pajamas. “Age two weeks, two days, and six hours. Taken from her crib in her parents’ home this afternoon.” A little red light flashes on the projected map. “Parents are Richard Carson Foster – seriously, their parents named their children Richard and Jane, have they not read Dick and Jane, that’s just asking for a bad nickname – age thirty-one, employed at the University of Washington as a professor of biology. Science must run in the family. Mother is Andrea Marie Foster, formerly Andrea Marie Parlini, age twenty-nine, works from home as a consulting landscape designer but seems to be taking a bit of a maternity leave.”

Their pictures come up, labeled with dates of birth and professions: Richard – Rick, Jane had called him on the phone – has Jane’s dark hair and bright eyes, and Andrea has dark hair and a rather swarthy complexion. Italian, Steve guesses, and likes her soft smile. 

“Andrea called nine-one-one at two-oh-seven this afternoon to report Madeline missing,” Tony continues, and then grins. “I’m working on getting a transcript or a recording, but that would involve breaking a lot of laws, so it’ll take a while.” He flicks his hand out, and a timeline appears. “Bruce, have at it.”

“Ah,” Bruce begins, but stands up to stare at the timeline. “According to the information given out to the media, Andrea put Maddie down for a nap at about one-thirty. She went out into the backyard with a baby monitor about ten minutes later, to rake up some leaves. Just after two, she finishes up – must have a small yard – and went inside. She checked on Maddie, and didn’t see her in the crib. After doing a brief search of the house, she calls nine-one-one.” The timeline highlights as he goes through each item. “At two-oh-seven. Police arrived at two-fifteen, and an Amber Alert was issued by two-thirty-five.”

“Amber Alert?” Steve asks, because he’s heard the term a few times now and doesn’t know what it means.

“Media alert for abducted and missing kids,” Clint explains, without looking away from the information scrolling above the table. “Usually put out right when the kid goes missing.”

“It’s usually a custody dispute gone wrong,” Bruce agrees, fleshing out Clint’s bare description. “They had it out on the news and I guess even some of those electronic highway reader-boards, but only a description of Maddie and the time she went missing. Andrea didn’t see anyone in the house, and didn’t hear anything on the baby monitor.”

“The door was open, though,” Tony adds, and takes over the briefing again. “She says that the front door was left open, and she hadn’t opened it. So the media’s speculating that someone walked into the house – might have been locked, but have been unlocked, who knows – walks in, picks up the baby girl, and walks right out again.” He brings up the satellite map of the neighborhood around the house: single-family houses are plotted tight against one another on narrow streets. “It’s a good neighborhood, and it was a nice afternoon, so there could have been people out walking around. Neighbors might have been out to see what happened. The cops are probably looking at that angle.”

Steve knows Tony well enough to cant his head to the side, to ask the next question. “So what angle are you looking at?”

Tony grins, pleased Steve caught on, and then instantly sobers up. “Look, the way this was done, this was planned, right? Professional. This wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. Planned out ahead of time, I mean,” he adds, because Bruce’s head has whipped up to stare at him, and Steve knows his jaw has dropped.

Natasha and Clint are nodding, though, so Steve turns to them. “You’re agreeing?” he asks.

Natasha hears the request for explanation in his question, and when she answers, her voice is low and clipped. “They’d have surveyed the house, knew which room the crib was in. Knew how to open the door quietly, if it was locked – probably had a key. It’s a cozy little neighborhood, a nice day, lots of neighbors around, so they wouldn’t have looked too out of place or someone would have noticed. They’d have been keeping tabs on the house – surveillance, bugs, I don’t know, but enough to know when mom went out back.”

Steve considers what he knows about Natasha – excellent agent, precise shot, dangerously beautiful, coldly professional, and able to lie perfectly – honestly debates looking up her real files when he has a chance, and orders, “Walk me through it, if you’d have done it.”

Bruce inhales, sharply. “Steve – ” he starts, but Steve holds up a hand and the man backs down, jittery eyes going to the only woman at the table. Clint’s leaned back in his chair, arms crossed and eyes flat; Tony drops into his own chair, curiosity on his face and obvious from his willingness to sit still long enough to listen to Natasha’s theory. He gives Steve a brief look of approval, and that clinches matters for Steve: he’ll have to look up Natasha’s file sooner or later, but this is as much a test for Natasha as it is Steve. Will she trust him – them – enough to share some of her shadier skills with them?

Natasha, though, stands. Her hands are loose at her sides, and she tilts her head to study the map that hovers over the table. “I’d start with the neighborhood,” she says after a minute. “Walk through it, at different times of the day. Are we assuming that I’ve already been assigned a target, or are we assuming that I choose my target based off of my own observations?”

“What does that mean?” Bruce wonders honestly.

Clint is the one who answers, his arms crossed tight in front of his chest and his face practically blank. “Your mission is to steal Maddie specifically,” he says, and Steve watches her eyes narrow. “Assume someone else has already done the research there. You know her name, her parents, her address, when she was brought home from the hospital.”

“Parameters?” she asks after another moment.

This time everyone waits for Clint, who is studying the same map. “Unnoticed,” he says at last, and uncrosses his arms to rest his hands on the table. Deliberately, Steve thinks, and wonders why. “Ten minute window.”

Natasha gives a little hum, and stares at the map for three long minutes.

Then, “Canvass the neighborhood first,” she says. “On foot, different times of day, before Maddie’s born. Maybe chat with a few people if they’re out, get a feel for how much attention they give foot traffic, cars, bikes. See who comes and goes. If I can,” she adds, and points at a neat row of houses on the map, “find a good base of operations. Here, here would be perfect.” She runs a finger across the row of houses across the street from the Foster home. “I’d want one that’s for sale or rent, currently unoccupied. Spread back a block if I had to, two blocks, maybe, but I’ll need a visual on the target’s house.”

Tony fiddles with the computer, and three houses in her two-block radius turn red. “Currently on the market,” he says, and Natasha picks the closest.

“This one,” she says. “Second-story window has a straight view of the Foster’s living room. Camp out here for a week, maybe two – when does he leave for work, when does she go out for groceries? Who’s coming over to visit the new baby? How long do guests stay? Track their movements, learn their patterns. Have pizza delivered one night by mistake, see if they answer the door when they’re not expecting company. Do they sign for packages or leave them on the porch, do any maintenance vans show up in the neighborhood? Typical tells.”

“Typical,” Bruce mutters, baffled, and Steve can tell he’s getting an education. Hell, Steve’s getting an education, so he doesn’t blame the man.

“How’d you get into the house?” Tony demands.

She doesn’t look away from the map. “Lockpick, maybe,” she says, and her mouth twitches to one side, annoyed with herself. “Home security system? Maybe, but it can’t be too high-end, not in such a homey neighborhood. Anyways, I can see into their living room, I’ll see them code it on and off, that’s easy enough. Probably a deadbolt… nice big windows in the living room. Craftsman house, so it’ll share a basic floorplan with other houses nearby…” She trails off, crosses her arms, and taps her fingers. “Check the lock when mom goes for groceries, or a walk. Friendly neighborhood, so maybe pose as delivery, takeout, political campaigner. Simple enough to do a skeleton key, see if that works. Maybe lift her key on a walk, make a copy, play good neighbor returning it. Yes,” and her fingers stop tapping. “Yes, that’s better. Play concerned neighbor. ‘I’ve found these on the sidewalk, are they yours?’ Return them while she’s home, see if that’ll get me into the house to check the floor plan. Plant a bug while I’m there.”

The hair on the back of Steve’s neck rises. It’s cold, what she’s doing, cold and professional and detached, and she’s not meeting their eyes. Clint’s staring at her, still blank and focused; but then the rest of them are staring at her too, their expressions ranging from fascinated to horrified.

“The day doesn’t matter,” Natasha murmurs into the silent room. “Dad will go to work, and mom and the baby stay at home. I’ll know the baby’s habits by now – when’s her naptime? I know the home security, I’ve got a copy of the key. Dress casual, normal for the neighborhood. Listen to my bug, wait for mom to put the baby down and maybe go upstairs, to turn on the tv in the kitchen, get involved somewhere in the back of the house. She goes outside, that’s even better. Go for a walk, maybe with one of those baby slings on. I’ve got a key, I know the floor plan. Go in the front door, go to the baby’s room. She’s asleep – maybe give her something to keep her that way.” She shudders, just a little, at the thought, and Steve finds it reassuring, that Natasha is still in there somewhere amidst this awful recitation. 

“Take the baby, go out the front door. Moving quick now, don’t want to be caught on the front steps by a neighbor who knows it’s not my baby. Walk down the block, leave the neighborhood. No, wouldn’t cover my tracks – all my gear would still be in my base.” And her head snaps up, looks at Clint. He doesn’t flinch at her direct gaze. “Meet you in front of the house. You’ve got a stroller, all the gear from our base packed away. Put the baby in the stroller, walk off for a leisurely stroll for two, three, four blocks. There’s a van waiting. Or you bring the van around as I leave the house – but the neighbors would have seen that. Either way,” she concludes, “two people.”

There is a very long pause, and then Bruce speaks. “You sometimes scare me, Agent Romanov,” he says, and it’s hard to tell if he’s admiring her or horrified.

She gives a little twisted smile, and sits back down. Her gaze stays locked on her hands, clasped in front of her on the table. Clint, beside her, nods, and leans forward. “Two people,” he agrees, and points at the same house she indicated, “and they might have been stupider than Nat and left something behind here.”

“Why a van?” Bruce asks. “Why not a car?”

He shakes his head. “Suburban neighborhood – no one would think twice about a couple with a van.”

It’s all very neat, Steve thinks, very well done. Very professional. But the pieces don’t add up in his mind, and so he stands, turns to look away from the data hovering over the table and the photos and maps. Instead, he stares out over the twinkling lights of Seattle, until his eyes settle on the dark water of the lake.

“Why?” he asks, turning, and the others look up from their quiet debate over car types. “Why?” he demands, sharper this time. “She’s a cute kid, only child, with two parents, middle-class or better. She’s going to be missed fairly quickly. She’s not some street kid no one will care about, she’s not some statistic somewhere. Why take her? Why so young? Where are you taking her?”

“Ransom,” Tony suggests immediately, but Steve shakes his head.

“Mom running her own business, taking time off to raise a kid, and a professor dad – they can’t be making enough money to risk that.”

Intrigued, Bruce steeples his hands together. “Revenge.”

“On a gardener and a teacher? At this level? I could see someone slashing their tires, egging their house, but a professional contract out on a kid?” Steve shakes his head. “Not unless Tony missed the fact that they’re CIA or something.”

“They’re not,” Tony chimes in, just to confirm. But his eyes are cold. “Revenge on Jane. Or Thor.”

The group pauses. Now there’s an unhappy idea, Steve thinks, and still shakes his head. “Too many steps,” he argues. “If you want revenge, you take it out on the one you want to hurt. Hurting family, this professionally, when we’re not even sure if they’d made the connection? When Jane didn’t meet the rest of us until today?” A new thought occurs to him. “How likely is it that anyone’s made the connection we’re out here, by the way?”

“We’ll go into that in a minute,” Tony says mildly, his voice deceptively calm. “I think you’re on to something, Cap.” There’s no nickname that follows his rank, though, which means Tony’s thinking. “Why her? Where’d they take her?”

They sit in silence for a long moment, and then Steve has an idea. “Tony,” he says slowly, “you can look up past kidnappings on that computer of yours, can’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Have there been any other cases like this?” he asks. “Solved, unsolved, doesn’t matter. Babies disappearing like this?”

“You’re thinking a connection?” Bruce asks.

“Maybe.”

Tony slides into place in front of his keyboard, and starts to type madly. Clint and Natasha confer in low voices, trading names back and forth with each other. It takes Steve a minute to realize that they’re likely asking who they know that might be capable of this, testing out what level the kidnappers would have to be to reach this level of skill.

“How wide a spread?” Tony asks, still typing. “State, nation, world? How far back?”

“Nation,” Clint tells him, when the others only look confused, “five, ten years.” The archer stands to look over his shoulder.

Tony exhales, sharply, as though all the breath has left his lungs in one sudden jerk of surprise. Heads turn towards him, but he shakes his head. “One more minute…” he says, and then stops. Data is flung from Tony’s hands to spin over the table, and he starts to swear, low and vicious. “Son of a bitch. Son of a _bitch_ ,” he repeats, and stares up at what he’s found.

Steve stares, too, and can’t help but feel sick.


	3. Section 1: Thor

# Section 1: Thor

The more he spends time with mortals, the more they amaze him.

Andrea Foster greets them at the door to her home, her eyes rimmed in red and swollen, and she still holds out her arms to her sister-by-marriage and draws Jane in for a hug. “Oh, Jane,” she says, and her voice is weepy but strong, “I’m so glad you came.”

“Your parents?” Jane asks, holding on to the other woman in what Thor quickly realizes is support. “Rick said they were coming in?”

“Not ‘til tomorrow night,” Andrea says, and pulls back. “Come in, come in – I can’t believe how fast you got here.”

“Thor’s friends have connections,” Jane says, and Andrea just nods, too preoccupied to question. 

Still, she turns to him, offers him a hand. “Thanks for coming,” she says, and Thor is gentle when he takes her hand in his.

“If I can help in any way, please,” he tells her, “do not hesitate to ask.”

Her smile swims in tears, but it’s offered freely. “Thanks,” she says, and takes a breath before turning back to Jane. “Rick is down at the police station,” she tells her, pulling her deeper into the house: there’s a front room, and then a dining room crammed full of bookshelves. The kitchen table is yellow wood, a bit battered and very homey, and Andrea waves at the chairs. “He took in copies of – of Maddie’s records. Do you want coffee? Tea?”

Thor shakes his head politely, but Jane puts her hand on his. “We’d love tea,” she says, and squeezes, and so Thor nods. 

“Please,” he says.

Andrea drifts into the kitchen, and they follow – Jane leans against the doorway of the kitchen with absent habit, and Thor, feeling a bit useless and far too large for the house, stands awkwardly behind her.

“The police came right away,” Andrea says, almost mechanically, and she puts a kettle under the faucet. “They’re being very helpful.” She moves the kettle to the stove, and turns to pull cups from a cabinet. Jane slips into the room, turns the stove on, and moves back to Thor before she notices. “They took pictures of her, and statements, and there’s a detective – Leary – who’s with Rick right now. They’re being very helpful,” she repeats, and looks down at her hands. “But Maddie’s still gone.”

“I’m sure they’re working hard to get her back,” Jane says, and Andrea nods.

“Yes. Yes,” and she turns briskly to cross the kitchen and pull out tea containers. “They’ve asked one of us to stay here, home, all the time, in case someone calls.” She gestures at the phone hanging from the wall. “They’re checking… hospitals,” and she says the word quickly, “fire stations, you know, places you can drop off an unwanted baby, in case – in case whoever took her is too afraid to bring her back here.”

“That’s why Rick took in her records?” Jane asks carefully.

A tear rolls down Andrea’s cheek. “Just in case,” she whispers, “for – for identification…”

And Andrea’s calm breaks into pieces, and the woman is sobbing on her kitchen floor, and Thor has no idea what to do in a situation like this. Neither does Jane – he can see the sheer terror in her eyes, and her face has gone completely white – but she runs the two steps forward to fling herself at the other woman, to wrap her arms around her brother’s wife and hold her as she weeps.

Thor stands awkwardly next to the cabinets, and Jane rocks with Andrea as the mother wails for her missing child. The tea kettle whistles, and that at least Thor knows how to handle – he springs forward to pull it from the stove, to turn off the heat as he’s been taught, to take it to the counter to make the tea. Jane’s soothing Andrea, helping her up, and the two women huddle together as they pass through the dining room to the couch in the front room.

Thor concentrates on the tea, because he can at least manage that, and when he’s fixed it how Pepper showed him, he takes two mugs out to the couch. He crouches in front of them when he gets there: Jane has her arm wrapped around her sister-in-law, who’s sniffling into tissues and still shaking.

“Mrs. Foster,” he says, and places a mug of the tea into her trembling hands. He wraps her fingers around it, lets the warmth seep into them, and Jane takes the tea from his other hand. “Mrs. Foster,” he repeats. “You are the bravest woman I have yet to meet.”

“No, I’m not,” she corrects him, voice small. “They took my daughter, took her when I was just right in the backyard.”

“And you are sitting here, doing everything you should do,” Thor counters when she looks to burst into more tears. “Your husband has done as the police have asked, and you are waiting as they asked, and you have been brave enough to sit and wait by yourself. Very few women, I think, have that kind of courage.”

She sniffs, but swallows down tears. “You’re just being kind,” she says.

Jane squeezes her shoulders. “But he’s also being honest,” she points out. “You’ve been through an awful day –”

“Worst day of my life,” she declares, so simply that Thor knows it’s true.

“An awful day,” Jane repeats, “and then Rick has to leave you alone in the house to stay up waiting for a call.”

Andrea’s lips quiver. “I don’t know if I want the phone to ring or not,” she whispers.

“I know,” Jane says gently. “But we’re here now, and we can at least stay up to listen for the phone, while you get some sleep.”

“I won’t be able to sleep.”

“But you’ll try,” Jane says. “You won’t do Maddie any good like this, Andrea. Get some sleep – we’ll wake you up if anything happens.”

Andrea takes a sip of her tea. “I have sleeping pills,” she admits, then shakes her head. “I don’t want to take them, Jane, I don’t want to go to bed and wake up and find out that this isn’t just some bad dream.”

“Andrea,” Jane says, so plainly that the woman sighs.

“I know, I know,” she sighs, and takes another drink from her tea. “Can I – can I sleep down here, with you?”

Jane looks at Thor, and Thor stands up from his position crouched in front of them. “It is your house, Mrs. Foster,” he says gently, and pulls the blanket he sees laying over the couch down to lay it beside her. “Rest, and wake refreshed in the morning.”

“He talks funny still,” Andrea murmurs to Jane, and Jane’s lips quirk into what could almost be a smile, and Andrea adds, “I think it makes it harder to disagree with him.”

Jane hands Thor her tea, and reaches for the blanket to shake it out and pull it over both of their laps. “It means you know he’s right,” she tells her, and then looks up at Thor. “Can you find the sleeping pills for me? Little white pill container, probably.”

“Medicine cabinet,” Andrea says faintly, and takes a long swallow of her tea.

Thor retrieves it. Andrea opens it, shakes out a pill into her hand, and swallows it with the tea. Jane pats the seat beside her, and so Thor sits, and within five quiet minutes, Andrea’s head is pillowed on Jane’s shoulder, and Jane’s head is on his shoulder. So Thor sits quietly and waits for her to speak.

“She’ll be really out of it, if that pill’s what I think it is,” Jane says after long minutes have passed. “When Rick gets home, can you help take her upstairs to bed?”

Andrea, Thor guesses, is five and a half feet tall and perhaps a hundred and forty pounds. “Of course,” he agrees, and runs a hand down Jane’s hair both because it is comforting and because he likes the feel of it. “We will stay up, and wait for a call to ring?”

“If you don’t mind,” Jane says, and her own fingers are combing through her sister-in-law’s tresses. Her smile is small and frightened. “You can tell me stories.”

She’s tired and scared, and putting on a brave front to support her husband and his wife. Thor’s fingers pause in her hair. “Perhaps you can tell me stories,” he suggests instead, and she gives a little laugh. 

“Mine aren’t half as interesting as yours,” she counters, and she wraps her arm around Andrea and snuggles her head into Thor’s shoulder. “Stars and radiation flashes and energy signatures and bridges to other worlds. You know, the usual.”

Because he does know, Thor smiles. “So when you fall asleep also, and the telephone in the kitchen does ring, what do I say to it?”

She giggles, weakly, but doesn’t argue the fact that she’ll fall asleep. “You say hello, and that this is the Foster’s home, and if it’s the police you wake me up.”

The phone rings once before Rick comes home, and as Thor predicted, Jane is curled up asleep before it rings. So Thor answers, and when he realizes that the disembodied voice on the other end of the phone belongs to the species of sub-humans Tony refers to as _reporters_ , he berates them for calling so late and informs them that they have the emotional range of a shelphig before hanging the phone up with a resounding click.

Rick comes home in the early hours of the morning, a taller match for Jane with dark hair and exhausted eyes and the start of a beard on his chin. He rubs his hand wearily along the stubble on his jaw when he comes in the front door and sees Thor sitting with two sleeping women on the couch, and sighs.

“Thor, right, I should have supposed she’d bring you.” The statement is given wearily: there’s no accusation, no demands, no disappointment.

“You are tired,” Thor says simply, because he’s met Rick once, and remembers liking Jane’s brother. “I will stay awake to answer the phone, and you should sleep.”

Jane stirs, and Thor is quick to extricate himself from her, to leave her sleeping on the couch with her sister-in-law. 

“I should sleep,” Rick agrees, and goes to touch his wife’s cheek. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Sleep,” Thor suggests quietly. “Sleep for your daughter, Mr. Foster, so that tomorrow you can fight for her again.”

“Yes,” Rick agrees, but he’s still crouched by his wife.

“I will carry Mrs. Foster upstairs.”

Rick stands, studies Thor, and gives a little laugh. “You probably could,” he says. “Jane caught herself a big one. What are you, six five? Sorry, sorry, that’s inappropriate.” And he pinches the bridge of his nose, and looks suddenly so exhausted that Thor can’t help himself.

“I will carry you upstairs as well, if you wish.”

Rick gives a little bark of a laugh. “Thanks but no,” he says, and to Thor’s surprise, he reaches down and lifts his own wife up off the couch, though Andrea is nearly his size. But his hands are gentle, and though he struggles under his wife’s weight, he lifts her up into his arms without waking her. “If you could get the doors, though…”

Thor hurries into the kitchen to open the door to the stairs, and despite feeling a bit claustrophobic, follows Rick up the narrow stairs to the low-ceilinged hallway of the second floor. “Door on the left,” Rick says, and Thor holds it open as Rick carefully maneuvers himself through it. 

Andrea is deposited on the bed tenderly, and she makes a little helpless noise and is still again. Rick frowns, touching her cheek, and Thor guesses why.

“She took a pill,” Thor tells Rick. “From a white container in the medicine cabinet.” He keeps his voice low.

“That would do it,” Rick murmurs. “She hasn’t needed a sleeping pill in years.” Then looks up at Thor with clear eyes. “I want a drink, and then bed. I need a drink.”

Thor only nods. He follows Rick down the hallway and stairs again, and they stand together in the kitchen, where Rick opens a cabinet, unscrews a cap from a glass bottle, and pours two liberal servings into the tea mugs Thor had placed on the counter earlier when the phone had rung.

“I,” Rick tells him, handing him one of the mugs, “have spent the past seven hours in a police station, listening to the cops talk back and forth about where they think my daughter might be, and what they think might have happened, and _thank you_ , Mr. Foster, for bringing in her documents, because if we find a body we’ll certainly need to make sure it matches. Christ.”

And he downs the drink in one shuddering gulp. “Christ,” he repeats weakly, and Thor downs his own drink, because when a brother is hurting, that is what one does.

“They surely did not say that to you,” he says after a minute. 

Rick sighs, and though his hands aren’t steady, he puts the whiskey away again. “Not in so many words,” he admits, and then suddenly whirls to face Thor. “You’re Thor of the Avengers, aren’t you?”

Thor is wearing jeans and a plain blue shirt, his hair pulled back into a little tail behind him so that he’s not so obviously different from the smaller mortals he disguises himself as. Tony and Steve hadn’t thought he’d be confronted on this tonight, and probably want him to lie, but Thor is angry – angry at how Andrea is forced to be so brave, how Jane is so afraid, how Rick’s eyes are desperate and bitter, how a little girl isn’t safe in her home. His fingers itch for his hammer and he’s tempted to light the city up with crackling strands of power so that they burn away the darkness to reveal a sleeping baby girl who must miss her mother. 

“Yes,” he says.

“Good.” Rick’s voice is fierce, and his eyes are steady. “Good. You’re here to help?”

The question wavers, more than a bit desperate, and Thor reaches for Jane’s brother’s arm to clasp it. “I am here to help.”

“Good.” And Rick’s breath leaves his lungs with a whoosh of air. “Good,” he repeats, and turns towards the stairs. “Then I can sleep now.”

Mortals astound him, sometimes, how easily they give their trust. But Rick goes upstairs, and the floorboards creak as he settles into bed. So Thor goes back out to the couch where Jane lies, and he drags a phone by the wire – which must stay plugged in, JARVIS taught him this – over to the couch within his reach. Then he lies down on the couch himself, wraps his arms around his Jane, so soft and warm, and stares without seeing up at the ceiling as he waits for daylight and shrill rings from the phone.

The phone starts ringing just before sunrise, but it is all reporters, so Thor soothes Jane back to sleep and takes great delight in telling reporters nothing. Then there’s a knock on the door, and he can see uniforms through the large windows outside, so he goes to answer it.

The two men standing there look surprised to see him. “Detective Leary,” the taller one says, and holds up a badge. “For the Fosters.”

“Come in,” Thor invites, and sees Jane stirring on the couch. “I will wake them.”

He knocks on the upstairs door and calls the news through it, and Rick says something back to him, so Thor goes back downstairs. Jane is barefoot, her shirt rumpled and her hair tangled, but she’s rolling back her sleeves and cracking eggs into a skillet in the kitchen. The detective and the other officer stand stiffly in the dining room, waiting.

Rick and Andrea come down together as Jane starts the sausage, and Jane points towards the dining room with the spatula. So they sit down at the table with the detectives, and Thor helps Jane with breakfast because there’s not much else he can do.

“My sister,” he hears Rick say curtly as he and Jane bring breakfast out to the table, “and her boyfriend. She flew out from New York when she heard the news.”

“Oh?” Detective Leary almost looks bored. “And what do you do in New York, Miss Foster?”

Jane, Thor can tell, has already decided she doesn’t really like the detective. “I don’t,” she says. “I was in New York on my way back from my lab in Siberia, just a stopover before coming out here to meet Maddie. And it’s Doctor Foster, actually.”

Leary no longer looks bored. His eyes sharpen. “And what do you do in Siberia, Dr. Foster?” he asks mildly.

“That’s classified,” Jane tells him shortly.

“I’m sure you’re – ”

“No, really,” Jane interrupts him, and pulls a card from her jeans pocket. “Classified. Here’s the contact information for my section supervisor, if you need to verify.”

“And can you verify your whereabouts for yesterday, between the hours of noon and four?”

Andrea and Rick both look shocked at the question; Jane doesn’t blink. “Seattle time?” she asks, and doesn’t wait for confirmation. She rattles off her flight number and information. “Halfway across the Atlantic, I think. And now that I’m no longer a suspect, can you please tell us if there’s any developments?”

“And this is your… boyfriend?” Leary asks, hesitating over the word as Thor crosses his arms and does his best to not let his distaste of the man’s questions show through.

Rick is the one to step in. “Thor,” he supplies, “and they’ve been dating for what, over a year now, met through her work.”

Thor smiles, tries not to show too many teeth. “Classified,” he says, when the man’s mouth opens. Tony, he thinks, would be proud at how fast Leary’s mouth shuts. “But Tony Stark can vouch for my presence at his home yesterday should you doubt my word.” 

There are cards in the wallet in his pocket, created specifically for situations like this, so Thor reaches for one, picks it out of the leather wallet with careful fingers, and offers it to the detective. It identifies him as Thor Havison, a director at Stark Industries, and Thor is fairly sure that the numbers on the card go straight to Pepper Potts.

Leary glances at the card. “Huh,” he says, and pockets it. “Well, down to business, Mr. Foster.”

He asks questions as they eat, or try to: Andrea pushes the eggs around her plate and Rick doesn’t touch his fork. He’s walking them over their statements from the previous day, Thor realizes, and though he might not like the man well, he’s doing his job.

“Do you have anything to add?” he asks at last, and Andrea’s patience snaps.

“Have you found anything new?” she demands. “Anything?”

“No,” Leary says, and his voice is surprisingly gentle. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Foster. There have been no phone calls, no ransom demands, no –”

“Ransom demands?” Rick repeats, shocked. “ _Ransom?_ You think someone took Maddie just to get money?”

“It’s not high on the list,” Leary says, unperturbed by Rick’s outburst, “but it’s still a possibility. And it may not be for money. Your sister’s involvement in classified activities could very well –”

“Bullshit,” Jane interrupts pleasantly, and Leary turns an interesting shade of red.

“What?”

“I said bullshit.” She stands, pours herself a glass of juice from the carafe on the table. “My classified work – which I will not tell you about without direct orders from my superiors – has ensured that my family appears nowhere in my personal files, and they are not on any contact list available on any informational searches done on me.”

“That doesn’t preclude neighbors or coworkers from casually inquiring –”

“Bullshit,” Jane interrupts again, with relish, and Thor thinks of the woman who was perfectly willing to sneak him into a government lockdown zone and has to hide a smile. “Detective, my brother doesn’t even know what I do beyond the fact that I work in labs, so I very much doubt he talks about my work over the fence with his neighbors.”

Leary shifts his gaze to Rick. “Is this true?”

Rick shrugs, a bit helplessly. “Her doctorate is in astrophysics,” he offers dully. “I assume she’s working with telescopes and NASA.”

“Hm,” Leary says, obviously stymied.

Andrea turns her attention to the other man, who has so far remained silent. “Officer Mason,” she asks him, “what happens if – if she isn’t found today?”

“Mrs. Foster,” he says gently, “don’t focus on that just yet. We’ve got many options…”

“Officer,” she repeats, and her voice is stronger, “what happens?”

Officer Mason is a man of middling height, with a soft voice and a rather soft middle. His hair is graying and starting to thin, and his hands are steady where they’re folded on the table. Thor thinks his eyes are too soft, though: they are concerned and still focused, but there is no warrior’s light there, just sympathy for a mother of a missing infant.

“You understand,” he says slowly, “that the odds of a safe recovery diminish the longer she’s missing.”

Andrea nods, tightly, and reaches for and grips Rick’s hand without looking for it.

Mason continues, “I would recommend, at this point, that you go to the media, and saturate them with Maddie’s picture as much as possible. Someone, somewhere, might have seen her, recognized her. It’s a long shot,” he cautions, “infants tend to look alike to anyone who isn’t a parent. But without a clear suspect, Maddie is our best bet.”

“Then what?”

Mason leans back in his chair, pity in his eyes. “Then we wait. Detective Leary has his leads,” he reminds her, “and he’s not giving up on this. But it’s been only a day.”

“Odds of a safe recovery diminish,” Andrea starts, but chokes on the words before she can finish them. 

Mason looks away, and Thor wants, very badly, to slam his hand down on the table and demand to know what leads the police plan on following, just what they will do to get a little girl back to her parents.

But he doesn’t, and the police leave after saying words like _press conference_ and _neighborhood vigil_ and _keep in touch_.

“I hate him,” Rick says viciously when the door shuts. 

“He’s doing his best,” Andrea counters softly. “And I liked Officer Mason. He was honest.”

Jane links her hands in front of her to stop them from shaking. “I have money,” she offers. “If you want to hire someone private to investigate this, I have money.”

Thor thinks of the slip of paper Tony gave Jane on the plane, and puts his hand on Jane’s shoulder. 

“I believe I have a better idea,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thor's business card states his last name as Havison - "Havi" is one of Odin's titles, meaning something like "High One". I figured Tony (or at least Pepper) would be smart enough to realize that Thor should at least try to have a cover that doesn't scream "I'm Thor Odinson of the Avengers!", and Havison would be close enough to meet with Thor's approval.


	4. Section 1: Clint

# Section 1: Clint

Colin Boyd is a decorated Army veteran and a former cop. He’s run his own private security company for years now, and he started contracting out with Stark Industries nearly five years ago, originally on event and location security. But he’d impressed the right people, met the important people, and so for the last year or so, when Tony Stark travels into obvious trouble, he takes Colin Boyd with him.

Colin has an apartment in New York, not too far from the Tower where he spends his days designing security systems. He’s been married two years now, and his wife understands the eccentric demands of his employer since she works for Stark Industries herself. He’s a crack shot on the rifle range, observant in public, quiet enough to be unnoticed but authoritative enough to command attention when it’s required. He’s an excellent bodyguard and a decent assistant.

Pepper trusts him to keep Tony out of trouble. The trust is, mostly, well-placed; occasionally Tony can talk him into doing something unadvised, but Tony can never convince him to do something monumentally stupid.

He doesn’t mind Tony’s fixation with Black Sabbath and rock and roll, so when Colin drives Tony to the Foster home, the radio is tuned to a station both men enjoy and then turned up.

Clint likes Colin, and is comfortable with him in a way he’s rarely achieved with the various covers he’s assumed over the years. Natasha can pull a veil over herself and assume someone else’s identity without trying, but Clint has to work at it a bit more. He doesn’t have to try all that hard with Colin.

That’s the point, he supposes: when SHIELD realized that two of their best agents had attracted a fair bit of media attention, SHIELD had gone right to work burying them in plain sight. Colin was Clint’s solution.

It helps that Colin is more or less Clint, with the same tastes and preferences and basic skill sets, just close enough that Clint doesn’t have to put on an act most of the time. The details are changed, of course – the fact that Colin was a cop never fails to amuse Clint – and there are still plenty of new details to remember. But it’s an easy cover for him, comfortable, and he’s slipped into it so many times over the past year or so that it’s second nature now to let Clint fade into the background and Colin step forward. 

It’s been over a year since he’s started playing Colin, and Clint has learned to keep Colin’s supplies in his jump bag. It’s a quick change: no contacts, no wig, no hair dye. Just a good suit and a shoulder harness, a wedding ring and a different ID in his wallet, and Clint is Colin and therefore next to invisible. 

“What are you going to tell the Fosters?” he asks, pulling the car up beside another one, and then setting it into reverse.

“As little as I can get away with,” Tony answers, and inches his sunglasses further up his nose as Clint parallel parks. “You work for me, so you get to carry the donuts.”

Clint only raises his eyebrows in response. “What?” Tony says innocently. “You do.”

Colin does, so when they knock on the faded wooden door, Tony is standing in front in an impeccably cut suit and Clint is standing to one side, holding donuts and coffee.

Jane opens the door, her clothing rumpled, and gives them a tired smile. “Hi,” she says, and calls over her shoulder, “Thor? Tony’s here.”

“Makes it sound like a playdate,” Tony mutters, but he steps into the house with her.

Jane looks at Clint, clearly confused, and he gives her a smile from behind his sunglasses. “I’m Colin Boyd,” he introduces himself smoothly, before she has the chance to say a different name. “I work for Mr. Stark. We thought you could use some provisions.” He holds up the donuts and the box of coffee.

“Oh,” Jane says, and her gaze flickers from the coffee to Clint’s face and back. “Oh. Okay. Yeah, thanks.”

She leads them both through the front room to a dining room, where bookshelves line the walls around two south-facing windows. There are three people at the table, plus Thor, who’s standing to join them, and Clint can pick out the family resemblances.

“Thank you for coming,” Thor says into the rather awkward silence. “Jane, would you introduce everyone?”

The man at the table is clearly Jane’s brother Rick; his wife, Andrea, is tired but composed. The older woman sitting beside her is, Clint thinks, what Jane will look like in another thirty years: graying hair, bright eyes, and fragile hands.

“My mother, Rachael,” Jane explains, and introduces her brother and sister-in-law as well. “This is Tony Stark, Thor’s friend – and Mr. Boyd.” He’s not surprised she doesn’t try to explain him. Instead, he gives everyone at the table a faint smile, and sets down the coffee and donut box before stepping back against one of the bookshelves. Not quite out of sight, but he watches the Fosters already begin to tune him out.

“I’m sorry for intruding into what’s clearly family business, but Jane was having dinner with us when you called,” Tony says, with the careless tone that always masks how carefully he’s planning out his words. “It seemed time was of the essence, so it was simplest for me to fly her out here myself. I understand there’s been no news?”

“No,” Rick Foster says, and though his eyes are still grieving, he’s sitting like a man who has regained hope. “Nothing yet. But that means…”

He glances at his wife, and she’s the one to speak. “That means there’s no body,” she says in a voice barely above a whisper. “And that means there’s still some hope.”

“Of course there’s hope,” Tony and Rachael Foster say together. Jane’s mother gives him an approving glance, and then goes right on speaking. “The police are doing their job, Andrea, and you know they’re not giving up.” 

“And if you need help, let me know,” Tony says abruptly. “I know some very good private investigators, and I’ve got connections with the media.” He takes a donut, because no one else is making a move for them. “We can get the word out, put up bulletins, knock on doors, whatever it takes.”

Clint remembers Tony’s file, and months spent in a cave in a desert, and isn’t surprised he’s decided to throw his weight into finding and returning a kidnapped baby girl.

Clearly someone else remembers, too. “Thank you,” Rachael Foster says briskly. “I know this isn’t the type of heroics your Iron Man usually involves himself in, nor the type of business Stark Industries usually handles.”

“It’s the type that matters,” Tony says, with that sudden serious switch he’s capable of. He sits down at the table, looks at Rick and Andrea. “Can you tell me what you know? What you’ve already done? I can put together a media release, something to keep it in the news…”

That seems to be a cue: Thor sits back down at the table, and Jane sits beside him. Andrea gives a sigh, and reaches for a donut; Rachael pours coffee. 

Clint, seeing their attention focusing on Tony, food, and information, takes two steps sideways and one back, to slide unnoticed out of the room and into the small back hallway.

There is a side room there, at the end of the hallway, with the door ajar. Clint doesn’t touch the door as he slips through it to stand in the center of the room. 

It’s very obviously a child’s nursery: there’s a yellow crib with pink blankets tossed about inside it and fake flowers dangling from a mobile mounted in the ceiling. He catalogues the furniture, turning to calculate the layout of the rom: a rocking chair with a homemade blanket thrown across the back, a dresser with padding on the top, a tall side table stacked high with diapers. The room is open and spacious, with a single window – still shut – with airy white curtains draped across it.

Clint studies the room with flat eyes. The police have been through it already, he knows; of course they have. But he imagines the blankets haphazardly pushed against the crib’s railings were flung aside by an anxious mother’s hands as she searched for her daughter; he thinks the stack of fallen diapers must be from when she turned in panic towards the door.

There’s a charging station for a baby monitor next to the crib. The monitor’s in evidence, he guesses, and steps further into the room to stand over the crib. Then he turns, counts his steps as he returns to the dining room, slipping back into the area effortlessly. He doubts any of the Fosters, their backs to him, noticed his absence.

They’re still talking – news conferences, he thinks; it’s going to be a long day – so Clint adjusts his stance a bit, and does some quick mental math in his head. Maybe ten steps from the door to the dining room, maybe five to cross into the hallway. Another two to reach the door; four from the door to the crib. Twenty-one steps from the front door to the infant; twenty-one steps out again afterwards. 

The whole thing could have taken less than a minute. 

His phone beeps in his pocket. Heads turn towards him as he checks the display, sees Natalie’s picture. “Excuse me,” he says, and counts his steps as he returns to the front porch.

He shuts the door behind him and turns to study the lock as he answers the phone. “Boyd.”

“It’s Natalie,” Natasha’s voice says into his ear. “Are you working?”

She means, _is anyone listening in_ , and so he answers, “I’ve got a minute or two.” The porch of a house where a child was kidnapped less than twenty-four hours earlier is hardly secure, but it’s his best option. He glances across the street, to where a house sits with a For Sale sign in the yard, and then down the road, where there are children playing in yards under the careful eyes of their mothers.

“It’s with the insurance case from last week,” she tells him, her voice just a little more polished than usual, a little more Natalie. “Roger and I were contacted by the detective this morning. No surprises there at all; the same as you’d expect.”

Clint translates her words almost automatically: they’ve worked together for so long now that he can follow her coded information as easily as though he’d made the code with her. She and Steve decided to investigate the police involved in the case, and the detective had checked out clean. 

That’s something, he thinks. A good sign. “Well, he’ll give it his best shot at the recovery,” he tells her, and peers at the locks on the sturdy front door. There’s an upper deadbolt and a lower locking knob, both polished to a shine. “Has he met with the insurance agency yet?” It’s a hook, something she can use to slip him more information, and she doesn’t disappoint.

“Yesterday,” she lies promptly, and then gives him more. “They didn’t like him much – you know how abrasive he can be – but they liked his record. He gets results, so they’ll work with him, but it’s probably a good thing that he’s got Officer Morrison as his liaison. Morrison knows how to work with people; he’s perfect for working with the agency.”

Mason, Clint’s brain supplies; the officer working with Detective Leary on the Foster case was Mason, not Morrison.

“Good,” he says, and frowns at the door. There aren’t any scratches, and the lock doesn’t look worn. If it was picked, it was done cleanly. “I don’t remember if he was part of the original team investigating the break-in or not.”

“He wasn’t,” Natasha says, and there’s a hint of an edge to her voice. “He’s not very active anymore – he wasn’t one of the original officers on scene.”

“Probably brought him in to keep the agency calm,” Clint offers.

“Mm, probably,” she says. “He’s good at the paperwork, at least. Roger knows him a little, did you know that?”

It’s such a blatant hook that Clint blinks, surprised. “Yeah? How?” She’s rarely this obvious, and his hand clenches around the phone, waiting for the reason why this information absolutely needs to be passed on.

“From when his wife died,” Natasha says, with just a hint of worry in her voice. “Morrison was one of the officers who came to his house to let him know about the accident.”

Shit.

“Roger’s handling it okay? We can pull him off the theft if we have to. There’s the Christmas party coming up he could work on, if this is shaking him up.”

“No, no, Roger’s doing fine – it’s actually working out well. Roger said Morrison handled it really professionally, and understood he needed to grieve. I think he’s glad to work with him again, to show how much further he’s come since then.”

Clint blows out a tense breath. “Good,” he says, though he’s lying. “But the meeting went well this morning, then?”

“Yes – I just thought I should let you know that the officers are working with the agency already. There’s assuming,” and her voice is very even, “a total loss. Recovery looks pretty dicey right now.”

His breath hisses out through his teeth. “Well,” he sighs. “That’s optimistic of them.”

“Sorry for the poor update.”

“Thanks. I’ll let Mr. Stark know. Do you have more meetings scheduled for today?”

Her voice lightens, a businesswoman checking her full schedule. “Yes, five more. I’ll let you know how they go if you think a call won’t interrupt anything important.”

He glances at the neighbor three doors down, raking leaves and obviously trying not to stare at both Tony’s black rental car – rather out of place among battered family vehicles – and Clint himself, with his neat suit and fancy cell phone. “No,” he says. “Mr. Stark’s just attending to some family business. A call should be fine.”

“Then I’ll contact you this afternoon,” Natasha says. “Do you have anything else for me?”

Clint glances back at the doorknob, reads the finely etched manufacturer’s name. “Check the security procedures one more time for the Tine/Lock event.”

“I can do that.” There’s clicking, as though she’s typing, and then she asks, “Did they decide if they wanted to bump up their coverage from silver to gold yet?”

He looks at the polished lock. “They’ll go with gold coverage, so we might need to call in a few extra people to go over the plans. Can you handle that?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she promises, and hangs up.

Shit.

Clint stands on the porch for another minute, and then pulls up a new contact on his phone. He types out a quick message, sets a time delay, and re-enters the house.

The group gathered around the table feels more energetic now, and several heads turn at his arrival. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes, and says to Tony, “The meeting this morning went well, and the Troyson deal went through with no problems.”

Most people at the table, Tony included, stare rather blankly at him. Then Tony blinks. “Troyson, right, right, good.” And his phone rings. 

Tony reaches for his phone with a grimace. “Sorry, sorry,” he mutters, sees the text light blinking, and opens the message.

_Looked into assigned cops. Mason is a grief counselor. Added in recently. No recovery expected._

“Well then,” Tony mutters, and erases the message with a swipe of his fingers. “Well.” And he looks up, thoughtfully, at Clint. Clint fights the urge to shift his weight, because it’s obvious that Tony’s not looking at him, but through him.

“Mr. Stark, we understand you’re very busy,” Andrea begins, and Tony snaps back to himself.

“No, no, I’m sorry,” he says. “Just a message about… hm, some real estate options.” He’s a fairly good liar. His eyes zone in on Clint, and a hint of a smile plays around his mouth. “Could you call your wife on the housing deals we were talking about yesterday? Tell her to buy today, if she can.”

Jane, at this point, looks thoroughly confused. Thor has his blank face on, carefully blocking out any knowledge to the point where he looks a little too innocent. So Clint clears his throat, draws the Fosters’ attention to him deliberately. “It’s nearing noon, Mr. Stark,” he says. “Would you like me to order lunch as well?”

Tony beams at him. “Chinese, I think,” he says. “I’m feeling Chinese. How about the rest of you?”

It draws attention away from real estate, and between ordering takeout and clearing off the remains of donuts and coffee, Clint finds time to text Natasha.

_Tony says to buy a house._

_I’m assuming a relevant one_ , she replies within minutes, more to indicate that she received the message than to actually debate the matter. But it’s Natasha all over, so Clint smirks, plays the good little employee who brings in Chinese takeout and sets it up around the table while Tony helps the Fosters draft a statement and plan what sounds like the first of many media conferences.

He picks a spot to sit in the front room, where he can keep an eye on the door, and spends the afternoon inviting in some reporters and shooing others away. Too, he stands beside Tony with the cameraman during each segment filmed, and glowers appropriately whenever a reporter’s questions veer off of Tony’s approved list.

Thor hides upstairs for most of the video segments, because Thor’s obviously, well, Thor, and putting him in the same room as Tony practically screams Avengers. They’ll figure out the connection soon enough, Clint’s sure – reporters are good at digging into things, and sooner or later someone will figure out that Jane’s boyfriend’s connection to Tony is a bit closer than working for his companies. But for now, Thor hides, and Clint envies him the escape from cameras, perky questions, and the tired eyes and quiet despair of the Fosters.

Clint goes up to tell Thor that the last of the paparazzi is gone for the day, and finds him with his arms crossed, staring over the backyard with a somber look on his face.

“Hey,” Clint says, and waits.

“Every time I come to Midgard,” Thor begins after a long pause, “it seems that there is some new… atrocity committed. Do you ever grow tired of this world being so fraught with hatred?”

There are a lot of answers to that, and Clint knows most of them better than most people. But that’s not what Thor is looking for, so instead he just gives a little shrug. “There’s war in Asgard, too,” he points out, and leans against the doorframe. It’ll wrinkle his suit, he thinks, and then thinks, _good_ , because the part of being Colin he hates the most is wearing the suit.

“Yes,” Thor agrees, troubled. “And I know better than most that even in Asgard, children are stolen. But this – this is not war, this is not mercy. This is cruel.” He looks away from the window, down at the room he stands in. A home office, Clint thinks, with a neat desk and catalogues lined up along the bookshelf beside it. “The Fosters are good people. Ordinary people, with ordinary lives. This is something they should not have to know.”

Because Clint agrees with him, he nods. “They’ll get through it,” he offers. “They’re stronger than you think. They’ll pull through it.”

Thor’s smile is sad. “You mortals are always stronger than I suspect,” he admits. “But they should not have to suffer this. I dislike seeing them hurt for something that is not of their making, something they do not deserve.” He uncrosses his arms and lets his hands hang steady along his legs. “Have we made progress toward finding her?”

Clint thinks briefly of lists of missing children, of Natasha’s cool recitation of how to steal an infant. “Some,” he tells the demigod. “We’re still working on some ideas.”

Thor nods. “The police said that. They are pursuing leads.”

Clint’s lips tighten; the police say pursuing leads but send a grief counselor instead of a second investigating officer. It makes him angry, and his hands clench at his sides. “I think we might do a bit better than the cops,” he says curtly.

Thor considers him. “You do not like the police.”

Clint thinks of heavy hands the police never tied, of blood staining the floor, of steel bars and cages. He can’t quite smile at Thor’s statement, though it’s accurate. “It’s fair to say they don’t like me much either,” he tells Thor instead. “But these particular cops? I’m not overly impressed. We’ll do better.”

“We will.” Thor glances at Clint. “Richard has determined who I am. Please let Tony know when you leave.”

Clint’s not overly surprised. “Sure. Will you be staying here tonight?”

“For a few hours, but I do not yet know if we will spend the night.” Thor’s eyes glint hard for a second. “I told the Fosters that I would like need to consult with Tony while he was here. So please, if we are to gather, inform me.” He pulls out a Stark Industries cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans. It’s the advanced model, limited edition, same as Clint’s. But in Thor’s hand it looks ridiculously tiny. “I would like to be present to see what is decided.”

“We’ll call you,” Clint agrees. “But for now, we should go downstairs. Media’s over, so you should be safe.”

Thor grimaces, but goes down the stairs all the same. He goes to stand by Jane, and murmurs something in her ear that has her nodding.

Tony’s working on a computer – what looks like a regular desktop computer, dragged out into the kitchen. “Colin,” he says absently, “Andrea’s parents are coming in tonight – can you get them a hotel room nearby? And another for Jane and Thor, the usual one Thor uses when he’s in town.”

Clint correctly translates that as, _the one we’re staying at_ , and goes to play good little minion of the eccentric billionaire. 

“Oh!” Tony shouts as he moves out to the other room, “I need a laptop, too. Tell Pepper the field-test version one, she can send it out.”

So Clint steps back out onto the front porch, and because it’s a lovely October afternoon, he goes down the steps to stand on the walkway to the house as he makes his calls. It gives him a good view of the neighborhood, so he turns in place as he puts his reservations in and uses Tony’s credit card with reckless abandon.

He calls Pepper last, and she picks up the phone with a careful, “Hello?”

“Miss Potts,” he says politely, with a small smile, because she’s one of the nicest people he’s met, and doesn’t abuse her power as his theoretical employer. “It’s Colin Boyd. Do you have a minute?”

“Oh!” And he can picture her as she shifts gears to speak with Colin rather than Clint. She’s not quite as natural at it as Tony – she’s too honest for her own good sometimes, though she has a sneaky streak that Clint approves of – but she at least understands the necessity for the cover, and does her best to support him without making his life difficult and take utter advantage of the fact that his cover technically makes her his superior. “How’s Seattle? Is there any news?”

He updates her, very briefly, speaking just loudly enough that the man trimming the hedge two doors down can eavesdrop when he turns off the hedge trimmer. He adds, “Mr. Stark’s done several press conferences, so we’re all hoping the child is found quickly.”

He hears Pepper sigh. “I was hoping for better news.”

“We all were. Mr. Stark wants me to ask you to send out his field-test laptop.”

“His – oh. Things are going that badly, then?”

“I suppose.” Clint’s not entirely sure what the field-test laptop is, so he can’t comment on why it’s necessary. “But it’s looking likely we’ll be here another few days, at least.”

“I’ll send it overnight,” Pepper promises. “And Colin? Thanks for keeping him out of trouble.”

Clint brushes off the thanks, and they share goodbyes and disconnect.

The problem, he thinks as he slips his phone into his pocket, isn’t that he’s keeping Tony out of trouble. The problem is that they can’t find the troublemakers, and that’s putting them on edge. They’re the Avengers – they’re not used to detective work. They’re used to action and reaction, iron and arrows and guns and shields and rage and lightning. They’re used to obvious targets, not opponents who vanish into broad daylight without so much as a hint of their presence.

They aren’t designed for this kind of battle, and it’s frustrating to plod along uselessly, hoping that one of their ideas proves fruitful and leads them to the ones responsible.

Clint doesn’t like enemies he can’t find. He’s a good tracker, but there are no tracks to follow in a suburban neighborhood of concrete and wood. There are leads, of course, clues that might point him in the right direction, but still, Clint likes enemies he can target quickly and take out immediately. He doesn’t like the waiting, the not knowing, the guessing.

His fingers twitch, and he rubs his thumb along the calluses on his fingertips. He doesn’t have faith in the cops, but he has faith in his friends. 

He’ll have a target soon enough.


	5. Section 1: Bruce

# Section 1: Bruce

He is not cut out for undercover work. At all.

He tells Natasha this, repeatedly, when she first brings his name up for her partner, but she only gives him a cool smile and doesn’t let him weasel out of it. He appeals to Clint, who he figures would be better suited in more ways than one but who only gives him a grin and shakes his head, to Tony, who is predictably no help at all, and to Steve, who surely would be better suited to pose as Natasha’s husband than himself.

“You’d match better,” he says desperately to the man as he waits for Natasha by the hotel door. “You’ll tall and handsome and not as old and… stuff.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Steve says with a grin, and is gone without saving him.

Which leaves Bruce, with his glasses and rumpled hair and old button-down shirt, to partner with Natasha, who emerges from what’s become the supply room in casual jeans and a suede jacket, her wavy red hair pinned back and mostly-covered with a brown bandana.

“Ready?” she asks him without pausing, and he has to practically run to catch up with her before the elevator arrives.

“I really don’t think I’m the best man for this,” he tells her as they descend towards the first floor of the hotel. “I mean, undercover assignments are really your deal, you know? And Barton’s. He’d be much better for this.”

“He’s keeping Tony from being stupid,” she reminds him.

Bruce latches onto the excuse desperately. “I could do that.”

“Probably.” And her lips quirk into what is almost a smile. “But you, doctor, are still a bit more recognizable at the moment, so it’s safer to send Tony with someone the media can’t trace so easily.”

Bruce works that around his head for a second, and then laughs as the elevator doors open. “He’s going as Colin,” he realizes, and looks overhead at the ceiling, as though he could see Tony’s grin. 

Natasha is definitely smiling now, but it’s as though she’s thinking of a private joke. “Yes.”

“Poor Barton,” Bruce decides, and then remembers, poor me, and follows Natasha out of the elevator into the hotel lobby, where the noontime sun has conquered the constant clouds of Seattle to shine through panel-glass windows. “I still don’t think this is a good idea.” 

“You’ll be fine,” Natasha says. 

He can’t help from blurting out, “Why me? Why not Steve?”

Natasha glances at him, and though she’s still smiling, her eyes are serious. “Because this is going to be really, really annoying,” she tells him, and blows out a breath. “The realtor I picked? She’s chatty. And our job is to get her to stay chatty, so she doesn’t ask us too many questions. And I figured you’re good at being calm in the face of annoyances – you’ve worked with Tony for how long? – and we’re going to need that.” She reaches into her purse, even as Bruce’s jaw drops, and holds something out to him. “You’d better put this on, by the way.”

It’s a man’s wedding band, plain white gold, and Bruce stares at it before sliding it onto his finger rather sheepishly, pleased with her praise but still rather out of his element. “Please tell me you don’t travel with random men’s wedding rings in your suitcase,” he tells her as she hails a cab, and doubts he should mention that it’s a perfect fit.

“I don’t travel with random men’s wedding rings in my suitcase,” she repeats after him as the cab slides up to the hotel’s doors. It’s hardly reassuring, especially as he notices that she’s wearing rings herself, in matching white gold, and he wonders how long she’s habitually traveled with her own fake wedding set just in case it’s needed. 

“Where to?” the cabbie asks.

“Uh,” Bruce says articulately, and squints down at the list of addresses he’s holding. He reads off the first one, and the driver nods and slides out into traffic. 

“We need to be there by one,” Natasha adds, with a glance at the plain watch on her wrist. “We’re meeting a realtor.”

Bruce sighs, unable to escape, and settles back into his seat. “You buying a house?” the cabbie asks.

“Thinking of it,” she tells him with a smile. “Tom’s been promoted, so we’ll be moving here next month.”

Bruce supposes that he’s Tom, and does his best to look pleased by this.

“It’s a great city,” the driver says, and his explanations of why and what must be seen on their trip take them out of downtown, onto the highway, over an impressive bridge, and north two exits before he pulls out into a pleasant little neighborhood.

Bruce pays the man, and watches as Natasha laughs and asks for his cab number for their ride home. 

“You’re relaxed,” he tells her as she joins him on the curb, and isn’t sure how much of the relaxation is Natasha herself, and how much is the character she’s playing for the day. 

“Why shouldn’t I be?” she asks, and loops her arm through his with a fearlessness that still makes Bruce proud. She trusts him, he thinks, and remembers the terror on her face from his first change, the babbled promises of safety that had done nothing to keep the Other Guy from panicking. She trusts him, and that’s a warm glow somewhere behind his heart, that the one on the team with the least reason to do so trusts him enough to voluntarily – casually – touch him.

“I don’t know – breaking and entering, lying, burglary, annoying realtors…” The list is longer, but he stops there.

She smiles at him, not quite Natasha, but with enough of Natasha in her eyes that he’s tempted to smile back. “It’ll be fun,” she says, and a car pulls up to the curb next to them. “Now, remember what we went over, and you’ll be fine.”

“Fine,” Bruce mutters wonderingly, but he doesn’t have time to add anything more, because the realtor hopes out of her car and beams at them.

“You must be the Prestons!” she chirps, and God help him, she doesn’t _stop_ chirping the entire way up the front steps of the first house and into the living room, where she finally pauses for breath after asking, “And isn’t this one lovely?”

“Beautiful,” Natasha agrees, turning in a slow circle in the empty living room. “What can you tell us about it?”

The realtor smiles so hard her cheeks dimple. “Well,” she begins, and then she just doesn’t stop talking. Ever. Bruce begins to seriously wonder if he’ll even have to speak more than four words to her when she abruptly faces him, still smiling, and asks, “And what do you think, Mr. Preston?”

“Ah…” He makes a little waving motion with his hand. “I’m interested in the basement…”

“Of course!” Her heels click on the wood flooring as she leads them to the stairs. “It’s a fully furnished basement…”

The realtor’s name, he learns somewhere between the first house and the second, is Mary, and she’s just so pleased that they’re thinking of moving to Seattle. “A beautiful city, and a wonderful place to live,” she assures them. “A great place to raise a family.”

Natasha gives an embarrassed little giggle at that, and Bruce nearly stares at her in horror before he realizes that she’s _acting_ , of course she’s acting, and he shouldn’t be horrified at the thought because he’s acting too. God, this is harder than he thought. 

“Well, it’s important!” Mary says cheerful, and drives with reckless abandon to the next house. Bruce makes a mental note to remember that when Natasha says the word annoying, she really means it, in the teeth-gritting just-get-me-through-it oh-God-let-it-be-over type of way. He’s thankful for time spent meditating, for having the problem of Maddie to wrestle with in his head, because if he had to actually listen to and respond to Mary’s inane chatter the way Natasha is, he thinks he just might – might – allow the Other Guy to come out and play just to escape the stupidity.

They’re scheduled to see five houses, Bruce thinks in horror halfway through the third. The last two are the only important ones, really, but Natasha was adamant on not drawing attention to where they wanted to look, and so she’d picked three other houses nearby at random. 

By the fourth house, Bruce has figured out Natasha’s pattern: keep Mary talking, answer questions with questions, and let the realtor come to her own conclusions about them. He’s gained confidence enough to join in – Mary’s not exactly a brilliant mind, so he doesn’t feel too badly about pretending to be someone he’s not in front of her – and he is able to redirect Mary’s attention when they get to the fifth house, the one Natasha most wanted to see. It’s across the street from the Foster’s house – he can see Tony’s car and a news van from the front steps as they wait for Mary to open up the door – and just like Natasha had predicted, there’s a large, upper-floor window that faces the street.

He takes a deep breath, and prepares to throw himself under the bus for Maddie’s sake. “I like this one because I think you mentioned the unfinished basement,” he tells the realtor as they stand in the living room. “Honey,” and he chokes the word out as he looks at Natasha, “do you mind if I have her show me the basement?”

“I’ll look upstairs,” Natasha says, with a glance at her wristwatch. “We’ve only got a few more minutes before we’ll have to head back to the hotel. You’ve been so helpful,” she assures Mary, who’s still beaming. 

So, for the good of the team, Bruce goes down into a basement with the most vapid chatterbox he’s ever met, and stays down there asking questions about the house’s foundations and does she think he could put a workshop down here, and has it ever flooded before? It’s not hard to play Tom Preston in front of the realtor: he’s played any number of roles in his journeys and flights from authority, but never before with someone who’s known the truth watching him. It’s awkward to have a partner in crime, he thinks, but the thought makes him smile because he’s no longer a loner. So he manages to look pleased as Mary gushes on about model trains and woodworking and he answers her, pretending to be concerned and interested.

He buys Natasha a solid ten minutes upstairs, and when she calls down, “Honey? We should really get going,” he has to turn away from Mary so she won’t see the relief on his face. Just because he’s done this in the past, he thinks, doesn’t mean he ever wants to do it again.

Natasha handles the farewells, has the same cabbie called and waiting for them, and Bruce just watches her work. By the time they’ve waved off Mary and climbed into the cab, Bruce can’t hold back his sigh anymore.

“That bad, huh?” the cabbie asks with a wink, pulling away from the curb. Bruce can’t help but glance behind him at the Foster’s home: Tony’s sleek rental car is parked out front, the news van is gone, and the home itself looks warm and inviting, a typical suburban house.

“Never look at five houses in a row with that woman,” Bruce says honestly, turning to face forward, and the cabbie laughs.

So does Natasha. “I liked that last one,” she mentions, and his pulse quickens because that’s a sign she’s found something. “What did you think?”

“Big basement,” Bruce says after a minute. “I like it if you like it.” 

Natasha laughs again as she pulls out her phone.

“You’re whipped, man,” the driver tells him, and Bruce can’t help the flush that covers his cheeks.

“Hi, Colin,” Natasha tells her phone. “I think we found a winner on the one I pointed out yesterday. Could you get all the paperwork started with the bank?” She makes a few more non-committal noises, and then laughs. “Great. Thanks.”

She shuts off her phone, and leans back in her seat. “There,” she says, and looks sideways at Bruce. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Her definition of bad is very different from his definition of bad, but they arrive back at the hotel relatively unscathed, so he grudgingly agrees.

“Is it always that easy?” he asks, honestly curious, tugging off his fake wedding band as the elevator doors close.

She makes a face. “No,” she says, and takes back the wedding ring he offers her. “Most of the time you’re fooling more people than a bored cab driver and a really stupid realtor, and most of the time they think to ask more questions to test your story.” She gives him a tight little grin, eyes a bit feral. “Sometimes they try to shoot you.”

“Right.” Bruce nods, but can’t help grinning back at her even though she’s confirmed his thoughts. “Not my line of work.” He goes straight up to the computer at his desk when the elevator takes them to the penthouse suite.

“You did pretty well,” she tells him, and he just shrugs.

“How’d it go?” Steve asks. He’s going through papers, scanning old case notes and making little marks on the map on the table.

Bruce considers. “I think Tony bought a house today.”

Natasha unslings the purse she’s been carrying around all morning. “Hopefully,” she agrees, and pulls out something wrapped in cloth. “Considering I found this upstairs on the windowsill.”

It’s a pair of binoculars.

“Can we test that for fingerprints?” Steve demands.

Bruce is already sorting through the kit Tony had given him that morning. “Give me a minute,” he says, pulling out the needed items. 

“Find anything while we were out?” Natasha asks, coming around the table to peer at Steve’s map.

They’re quiet background noise as Bruce works over the binoculars, a comforting murmur of voices alternating from Natasha’s soft tones to Steve’s lower pitch. He’s dusted for prints before, when he was on the run and worried about being tracked, and it’s a skill he’s never really lost. With Tony’s computer system, too, he has no problem scanning in the prints he lifts, feeding them into the system. 

“Two different prints,” he interjects, into a lull in their conversation. 

Steve looks up. “Whose?”

He gestures at his computer. “Working on it. Did you come up with anything?”

Steve sighs, leans back in his chair. “I eliminated a few,” he admits. “But it’s… upsetting how many of the cases are still unsolved.”

Bruce comes around the table, puts his glasses on to stare at the information Steve’s been going through. Almost absently, he starts to key the new input into the computer, removing solved cases and adding Steve’s notes to the remaining files. He eliminates a few more – unsolved, but he looks at them and sees little hints of custody fights, of conflicting stories, and he’s focusing only on the ones that completely baffle the police.

“What would you want with this many kids?” Steve burst out angrily after a moment’s silence.

“Anything.” Natasha’s voice is very quiet. “There are lots of uses for kids.”

“Kids, sure.” And Steve waves a tight arm at the columns of data. “But infants? Why babies?”

It’s a good point. Bruce looks up. “There’s a pattern to it,” he says, and squints again, even though he’s wearing his glasses. Might be time for a stronger prescription. “I’m going to widen the search, check a few more variables…”

“Like what?” Natasha asks.

“Is it just infants?” he questions, typing in commands. “Steve’s right – this would change the data if it’s infants and children, too. Just the United States? How many years back does the pattern go?” He keys in search strings with quick bursts of typing, and then leans back. “There. I’m screening out anyone older than six months. That ought to help narrow the field.”

They sit in silence as the computer hums, and then starts scrolling data up in neat little columns.

“Whoa, whoa,” Steve commands. “Slow it down.”

Bruce does, and the three of them stare at the information. “There’s a jump,” Bruce says, eyes tracking the information. He reaches up to touch the display, freezes the scroll of information, and highlights it as necessary. “See here? There’s a significant jump. Eight years back.”

The numbers shift in front of him, and some part of his mind starts running probability, equations to make sense of the sheer data. “It’s a what, twenty, twenty-five percent increase,” he murmurs, shifting the data aside. He glances at other lists, removes solved cases. “No, more than that. Figure some of these are the usual inhumanities of man; that would account for some of them, but not this many. Display the locations,” he realizes, and looks down to code the information in.

Steve is the one to grab the holographic map and stretch it wider over the table with his hands as little pops of light begin to flare up. “It’s across the States,” he says, horrified and wondering at once.

“No international pops,” Natasha agrees, voice low. “That narrows it down.”

“How?” Steve asks her. “Wait, why?”

“It means they’re not crossing the borders,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “Why not? If they’re keeping the babies alive,” and her voice is rock steady, refusing to think about the alternative, “they’re going to need identification sooner or later that can pass muster. They must have a forger, someone good enough to pass for official birth certificates or whatever else they use.”

“But if they’ve got a forger that good, Border Patrol and Customs shouldn’t be a problem,” Bruce points out. 

“Yeah.” And she shakes her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.” She sounds frustrated.

“What about a base of operations?” Steve suggests suddenly. He looks at Natasha. “Last night you were talking on how you’d pull this off, and it sounded like you were stealing, I don’t know, artwork, diamonds, not a baby. So okay, you steal a really big diamond, what do you do with it?”

“You fence it,” Bruce realizes. “You fence it through someone else, and then it’s their problem how to make it legitimate.”

“Right.” Steve frowns. “So there’s what, a clearinghouse for babies somewhere, a sleazy pawnshop? They’re not really diamonds; you can’t just stash kids in storage until you’ve got a buyer.”

“Wanna bet?” Natasha mutters softly.

“A _buyer_.” And suddenly everything clicks for Bruce. “A buyer, damn it.” And the anger that is always simmering inside of him is somehow instantly boiling, so close to the surface that he clenches his jaw and turns his back on the map sparkling with dots of missing children. 

“Doc,” Steve starts, concerned, and Bruce holds up a hand.

“Give me a minute.”

The rage is hard to buckle down, because he wants to be angry, wants to be indignant and furious and shouting out about how wrong this is, how cruel and selfish and destroying this is. He shuts his eyes, breathes out hard through his mouth, in through his nose, and when someone touches him, he is startled to the point where he jerks around to face whoever’s put their hand tentatively on his arm.

It’s Steve, who looks stern and concerned. “Breathe, doctor,” he orders, and his hand is tight but not constricting on Bruce’s arm.

Then Natasha steps to his other side, puts her left hand on his arm – her engagement ring still sparkles on her finger, not yet abandoned – and Bruce realizes that his anger is closer to the surface than he thought, because the arm she touches is tinged green.

“Breathe, Bruce,” she says quietly, and he looks at her expecting to see fear in her eyes, but they’re just tight and concerned. “In,” she says evenly, “out.” 

He breathes, because Steve and Natasha breathe with him. Their hands feel small and distant on his skin, warm and pulsing with life, and he focuses on that. The rage reluctantly returns to a simmer rather than a boil, and he slams a lid shut on the Other Guy and takes a deep, clean breath out of rhythm.

The others pause, and look at him, and he pulls away from their hands. “Thanks,” he says, a bit awkwardly, and they look at each other, equally awkward, and move back to the table.

“So,” Steve says after a few seconds. “Want to share?”

Bruce takes a few more breaths before he trusts himself to respond, and then turns back to face them. “Do either of you know much about adoption?” he asks.

They glance at each other. “A little,” Steve admits, “but it’s probably outdated.” Natasha just shakes her head wordlessly.

“I’ve looked into it, a little,” Bruce says, and tries for a self-deprecating smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You know, since odds of me having kids are… well. Healthy kids. I mean…” He clears his throat. “Betty and I… well.” He pulls his glasses off, turns them over in his hands to have something to focus on.

“Got it.” Steve’s voice sounds far away, but also rusty, as though he’s struggling to keep it even. Bruce doesn’t look up to meet his eyes. “What did you find?” 

Bruce is grateful that the man’s striving to be businesslike, because it helps him stay even himself. “There are two different types of adoption, basically,” he tells them, still looking at his glasses. “There’s foster care option, where you adopt out of the system, give kids a home that way. Lots of paperwork, of course; you deal with the state institutions, that kind of thing. Then there’s private adoption – you work with an adoption agency or something like that, don’t involve the state. I think most domestic adoptions are private; we looked it up once, but I’m not sure.”

He looks up from his glasses. “It’s expensive either way – paperwork and background checks and all sorts of hoops to jump through that I’d never pass.” He blinks, not sure he meant to say that. “But I was thinking, well, with private adoptions, run through a private company… You charge all the same fees to the new parents, get them to put up all the money, and then hand them off someone else’s kid without having to go through the system…”

“You think there’s a front for kidnapping infants,” Natasha whispers. “A fake agency stealing kids to pass them off as legitimate?”

He squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t know,” he says. “There are some really good private agencies out there, and it’s not like anyone can set up themselves as an adoption agency. You’d need lawyers. There’s probably laws and codes and all sorts of checks for it…”

“All of which can be broken, bent, or bribed out of the way,” Steve points out, eyes hard. “It’s a good theory.”

“How much money would be at stake?” Natasha asks, moving around the table to start her own search. “For adoptions, I mean, private ones.”

Bruce thinks of a bank account set aside for someday, and clears his throat. “Thousands of dollars,” he says. “Tens of thousands.”

“That’s not small change.” Steve blows out a breath, turns around. “I don’t like it.”

“It fits.” Natasha’s typing with quick fingers. “The pattern’s there, and it’s a good theory. Tony can check it –”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a good theory,” Steve corrects, and Bruce can see the tightness in his arms, the tension there. “I said I don’t like it.” And to Bruce’s complete surprise, he sweeps a hand out across the small bar he’s facing, knocking the water pitcher and a collection of glasses to the floor. Two bounce; one shatters. The carpet soaks through with water.

“Cap!” That’s Natasha, jerking up out of her seat. Bruce is too stunned to say anything.

“I don’t like it,” Steve says again, angrily. “Stealing babies to charge other folks to raise them? What happens if we do get the kids back? Some of these kids have been gone for seven, eight years. If the theory’s right, they’ve been with another family for those years. New name, new ID – and we’d be ripping them out of one family to give them back to another family. I hate it.”

Bruce can see his point, and isn’t blind to the irony of the situation when he says, “Calm down, Steve.”

Abruptly, Steve’s hands come up, scrub tiredly at his face. “Yeah,” he admits. “Yeah. It’s got me shook up. It’s a good theory.”

Bruce sighs. “Yeah. We should run it past Tony. I’ll see if I can find these prints somewhere in the system, too.” 

He turns back to the computer, sees Natasha lower her head again and go back to her own search.

Steve cleans up the mess he’d made, military-precise and careful with the shattered glass. Then he starts pacing. He circles the room, and finally heaves a huge sigh and comes to rest with his hands pressing down onto the table’s surface.

“It’s a good theory,” he repeats. “Let’s get everything laid out, so we can show the other folks when they get back and plan our next steps.”

Natasha nods, as though she’s been waiting for his agreement. “Cap, you want to work on the unsolved cases?” she asks, and then glances at Bruce. “Are you up to starting the adoption research, or do you want to stay with the fingerprints?”

“The fingerprints don’t need supervision, at this point,” he says evenly, and opens up a new file. “I’ll work on the adoption theory.”

“You’ve got the next steps?” Steve asks her, and Natasha nods. 

Her phone rings bare minutes into the silence that results afterwards. “Hello?” she answers. “Hi, Colin.”

Steve’s head jerks up; Bruce carefully lifts his hands from the keyboard. “That’s good,” she tells Clint. “Are you finished up?”

She listens to her phone for a moment, and then laughs. “Oh, the usual. I bought a house, and we’re just wrapping up a proposal for a dinner meeting tonight.” She waits as Clint tells her something, and nods, glancing up at Steve. “That sounds good. I’ll plan on conferencing with the whole team at seven.”

That’s the clearest thing she’s relayed from Clint in all the conversations she’s had with him today. Bruce glances at the clock – they have another hour to finish their preparation for the meeting.

Natasha disconnects from the call. “Everyone will be here at seven,” she repeats, and Steve nods.

“I managed to get that,” he says wryly. “Even Thor?”

“I’m assuming so.” She looks to Bruce. “Think we can make it in time?”

Bruce thinks of a baby girl in an unfamiliar environment. “We’ll have to,” he says.


	6. Section 1: Tony

# Tony

He’s tired.

He doesn’t want to admit how tired he is: it’s mental more than physical, and that’s somehow worse. He’s exhausted enough to take the time to change before dinner, to pull off his suit and put on worn jeans and a soft t-shirt so well-loved that his arc reactor glows through it. It’s warm enough in the hotel suite that he goes out to the common room barefoot, enjoying the feel of the soft carpet under his feet. 

He likes this penthouse, he thinks, and looks at the windows and the balcony and the sweeping view of the glittering lights of downtown Seattle. It’s smaller than he remembers, though that could just be because last time it had been just him and Pepper using the suite, rather than five of the six Avengers. There are two rooms, and he’s claimed the master suite; the second bedroom has the mattress covered in gear and supplies, and Steve, Bruce, Natasha, and Clint had slept on blankets pulled out into the living area. He thinks it’s solidarity: if they all can’t have beds, he supposes, then none of them will, or maybe they were too tired to debate over who deserved the bed the most.

It’s sentiment he appreciates and ignores: he damn well is having a bed, even if it’s bigger than it needs to be since Pepper is still in New York.

Now everyone is gathering around the large wooden conference table. Clint’s changed out of his Colin suit as well – which is a pity, Tony thinks whimsically, as it means he can’t boss him around anymore – into what looks like BDUs and a black t-shirt. He looks more like Clint, though, which is a nice trade-off to no longer being his employer.

Natasha and Bruce are conferring in low tones over the computer’s display, with Bruce occasionally pointing at something and Natasha shaking her head. Steve is setting out silverware with careful precision on the table, and Thor has put Jane down into a chair and is, for lack of a better word, hovering over her. Tony doesn’t blame him: he knows what her day has been like, and she looks exhausted despite the careful makeup she’s wearing to hide it.

“So,” Tony says brightly, striding over to the silver catering cart wheeled next to the table. “Dinner meetings. I love dinner meetings.” He pulls off the cover of the first plate he comes to, and is assaulted with the tantalizing smell of perfectly cooked steak. “This one’s mine.”

He takes his plate to his seat, where he doesn’t bother to wait for the others before he starts eating. He knows them: if he doesn’t kick things off right away, they’ll never get started. So as he takes his first bite, Bruce and Natasha put aside the computer to come take their own plates. Steve puts out the last of the silverware, and hands Thor two plates; Clint carries his to his own seat and waits for Steve before starting.

“So,” Tony manages around a bite of potato. “I’ll go first.” He waves his fork at Jane. “We did a lot of press conferences, put out a really big reward, got a lot of media coverage. Everyone with a tv or a radio is going to know Maddie’s missing. There. Done. Next?” He celebrates finishing his report by taking another bite of steak.

Steve, unsurprisingly, is the next to speak, though he does so with his napkin folded in his lap and his fork motionless. It would be uncouth, Tony thinks, for Captain America to talk with his mouth full. 

“I looked into the police assigned to the case. Detective Leary is a good cop – not very likeable, and he’s got a few write-ups for being rough with people, but he’s got a good solve rate and should be able to handle this well enough. The other man, Officer Mason, well.” Steve shakes his head. “He _was_ a cop, but retired from active duty ten years ago. He’s the department’s grief counselor – they send him out to talk to the victim’s relatives when the victim isn’t going to come back.”

Jane makes a little distressed noise, and Steve looks at her sympathetically. “He was added to the case early this morning,” he continues. “But they haven’t pulled Leary, which means they’re not giving up.”

_Yet_ , Tony thinks, and is rather glad he hasn’t met the officers involved.

“Natasha?” Steve offers, and takes his first bite of dinner.

Natasha lowers her fork. “Bruce and I hit gold on the house across the street,” she tells the table, and looks at Tony. “Which you now own, by the way.” He nods, and Natasha turns to Thor and Jane. “We figured last night that whoever stole Maddie probably had been watching the house to find an opportunity, so we looked for a base of operations. Not only did we find it, but –” She points with her fork to a pair of binoculars sitting on the bar. “They left evidence behind. Bruce picked up two different fingerprints from it, which belong to Avery and Kitty Jones, of Miltonville, Florida.”

“Florida?” Jane asks, incredulously. Her fork drops to her plate with a clang. “That’s across the country from here.”

“They’re fairly minor criminals,” Bruce says, picking up the thread. He takes a drink from his water before he continues. “He’s got a dropped assault charge, and she’s got some petty theft. Neither of them ever got more than a day or two in jail, and they’ve dropped off the radar the past few years. I’m running their names through Tony’s search engine now to see where they’ve been.”

“I can unlock a few more search levels,” Tony offers. “Financials, receipts, medical records. If they’re using their real names, that’ll bring us in a trail.”

“Do we have pictures of them?” Clint leans forward in his chair.

“I can bring them up.” Bruce gestures at the computer. “Ah, we also came up with a theory on why Maddie was stolen,” he starts nervously. 

“Tell me. Please.” Jane’s given up all pretense of eating.

Bruce takes a deep breath. “So we were tracking all the stolen infants,” he begins, and he outlines his theory of a corrupt adoption agency.

Tony finishes off his steak, and considers. “Where would they be cutting back costs?” he wonders aloud. At the glances from around the table, he shrugs. “I’m a businessman, I think of these things. So okay, you’re running a fake adoption agency. Someone says, I want a kid, and here’s thirty grand. You go out and snag a kid from somewhere, but then you’ve got to get the kid a realistic looking ID, make up some story about where the kid comes from, pay the guys who snatch him. What’s their overhead? How much money do they make a pop?” He considers another point. “How much do they roll back into their business? They’ve got to be breaking laws, so how to make sure that’s not noticed? What about advertising, too? I mean, they can’t just put an ad out in the paper, _we steal kids so you don’t have to._ Is it word of mouth, or is it a real agency occasionally slipping in a stolen kid on the side?”

Bruce is scribbling notes. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admits. “Natasha and I figured it’ll be more than one person – a director, maybe, but there would also have to be support staff.”

Clint nods. “Nurses,” he says, “child care, those people that go around to check that you’re actually serious about adopting a kid.”

“Exactly. A good forger,” Natasha adds. “Someone to make sure that no one has any reason to doubt birth certificates and adoption paperwork. Lawyers, to draft it all up and slide around the courts. There’s got to be a network.”

Thor speaks next, his voice a low rumble. “So where is the proof?” He puts one hand over Jane’s. “You have information to prove this?”

“Well, numbers.” Bruce sounds apologetic. “Maps, numbers, projections. It’s been going on for eight years, I think, if everything’s right.”

“Eight years?” Jane’s voice wavers. “Eight _years_?”

“I’m sorry,” he says miserably. “I can show you the tracking algorithms…”

Tony stands, abruptly. “I’d like to see them,” he says, and then realizes that Bruce is still eating. He looks down at his clean plate. “No, stay sitting,” he amends quickly, and sits back down. He looks around the table. “What does everyone think?”

Steve is the one he’s waiting for, because he knows Bruce and trusts Bruce’s algorithms, but Steve can sum up situations the best. He isn’t disappointed.

“I think,” Steve begins slowly, “it would fit the pattern. They started slow – one, two kids a year. Then, as they figure it out, the numbers jump – four or five kids a year, all over the U.S. so no one city gets too suspicious about it. Bring the kids back to some kind of base, set them up into families desperate for a baby who won’t question them if they look like a respectable agency, and sit back and enjoy the paycheck. It’s slick, but it fits.”

“Oh thank God,” Jane says, all one breath, and she all but collapses back into her chair.

“Jane?” Thor asks, instantly concerned, but Jane takes a deep breath, and though her smile is weak, it’s a smile.

“You think she’s alive,” she says clearly. “This theory, this means she’s alive, and she’s being taken care of.”

“Well taken care of,” Bruce interjects. “No one would want to adopt a neglected baby, not for the kind of money we’re talking about.”

“She’s alive.” Jane’s eyes are bright, but she doesn’t cry, and now she leans forward. “So how do we track her down?”

Bruce gives Natasha a little nod, and the redhead speaks up. “We’ll start with the Joneses, Avery and Kitty. If they took Maddie, we should be able to track them somehow – a rental car, a hotel, something. Hopefully they’ll take Maddie right to home base and lead us straight to the ringleaders, but if not…”

Bruce picks up the thread. “I’m making a list of adoption agencies,” he says, “starting with ones that are about eight years old. It’s huge – nationwide – but we’ll be able to narrow it down eventually.”

“Include older ones,” Tony muses aloud. “Don’t count anything seven years or younger.”

“And what do we do when we find them?” Jane wonders, and then flushes. “When you find them, I mean.”

“We’ll need their records,” Steve says. “Placement files, if they have them – names and dates of where the kids went. We’ll be able to find some of the missing kids that way.”

“There will be a leader,” Thor agrees slowly. “And he will have compatriots. We must stop them all.”

Clint, who’s been the most quiet of anyone at the table, speaks up. “We’ll need their home base, their front, to figure out how to confront them. But once we find them – well.” He looks around the table. “What do we want to do with them?”

“What do you mean?” Steve asks.

Clint shrugs, pushes his chair back from the table. “I mean, this is a national human trafficking ring. There are cases from what, twenty-seven states? Twenty-eight?”

“Ah.” And now Natasha’s caught on, even as the others look confused and Tony’s brow furrows. She tilts her head to the side. “So you’re asking if we deal with them ourselves, or if we turn them in.”

Silence stretches out at the table, for so long that Tony puts his hands flat on the table and pushes himself to the feet. To break the humming tension, he asks, “As SHIELD operatives, could you deal with them if we found them? Neatly enough that no one would ask awkward questions?”

Clint and Natasha share one of their long, inscrutable looks. “Yes,” Clint says, and takes a bite of vegetables.

Tony heaves out a breath. “Opinions,” he calls out, and lifts his hands. “What do you guys think?”

“We’re not murderers,” Steve says, almost instantly.

“Not all of us,” Natasha clarifies, so quietly that it’s almost worse than if she shouted it.

Steve pauses, reassesses. “No matter their crime,” he says again, more carefully, “we should not be the ones acting as judge and jury.”

“Even if they’re kidnapping kids?” Bruce asks, and his voice is tight and upset.

Steve’s jaw sets stubbornly. “Even then,” he agrees. “We’ve got consequences for that in this country, and we should make sure they face them.”

Clint scowls. “Some people are real good at escaping those consequences,” he says brusquely. “Sometimes it’s better to make sure they can’t.”

“Sometimes,” Bruce agrees slowly, though it’s fairly clear that he thinks this is one of those times.

“No,” Steve says, and pushes his plate back. “It goes against everything this country is supposed to stand for. Innocent until proven guilty, and a trial of your peers.” His eyes are hard, but his face looks frustrated. “We do it right, they don’t squirm out of it.”

“And who do you trust to do it right?” Barton shoots back. “Twelve random guys off the street who can get bought out or conned by the type of lawyers these guys will hire?” 

Steve just shakes his head. “There’s a system in place for this,” he insists, and no one else says anything.

“Well, we all know Wonder Boy’s view on the matter,” Tony says carelessly after the silence stretches on for another minute. “Any other opinions?”

“Cap’s right,” Natasha says suddenly, and the whole table shifts to look at her. Tony looks to Clint’s face, and doesn’t think the agent is surprised by her outburst, but then Clint’s regular expression is so calm he’s not sure if he’d notice.

But that’s all she says, so Tony taps his hands on the table. “Why?” he demands.

He can visibly see Natasha choosing her words carefully. “Assuming the operation is staged as a legitimate adoption agency,” she begins, “then there is no legal way for us to gain access to their files and placement records after the ringleaders are removed, no way for us to be sure that we’ve removed all the key players.” She says _removed_ ; Tony hears the word _killed_. “There would be no way to track the already missing children, no way to return them. The only thing we’d accomplish would be shutting down the operation, possibly only until whoever inherits it feels like they can start it up again.”

“That’s… a really good point,” Steve agrees slowly. His face relaxes, animates as he considers the options. “We’d want to see them arrested and facing trials. All their paperwork and files would be taken into evidence. There’d be formal interviews and it’d be a huge case against them. We’d be able to subpoena them…”

Tony winces, and holds up a hand. “Getting ahead of ourselves here,” he points out. “Assuming, assuming, assuming. This whole adoption thing isn’t proved yet.”

“I have algorithms,” Bruce reminds him.

“There’s more to crime than algorithms.” Tony paces away from the table. “Like profit. Okay. Hmm. If we want to do this your way,” with a jerky nod at Natasha, “we’re going to have to hand this over to people with actual authority over crime. Which is why I don’t want to do it.”

Bruce nods. “Yes,” he says, “exactly. If they’ve pulled this off, they’ve got lawyers, good lawyers. They’ll try to weasel out of it, and there’s no indication they’ll be punished for their crimes.”

“It’s not right to just go out there destroying things just because we don’t like what they’re doing.”

“Is there not a court system?” Thor asks. 

“It doesn’t always work,” Clint tells him, at the same time Steve says, “Yes.”

Jane speaks next, tentatively. “I think – well, I don’t know if I have a right to be talking here, since I’m not an Avenger – but I think – ”

“She’s your niece,” Tony says, and turns back to face her. “Go for it.”

“I want Maddie back,” Jane blurts out. “And if you’re right about how it’s done, I want Maddie back and all the other kids back to all the other parents who are devastated right now. And I want them stopped so that they never pull anything like this off again. So.” She lifts her hands. “To me, that says prison, not vigilantism. Not if what Natasha said is right, about the records and everything.”

The table again descends into silence. “Okay then,” Tony says, and sits down again. “She’s Jane’s niece – any objections to that plan?”

Bruce shifts unhappily in his seat, but doesn’t say anything. “Good,” Tony decides. “We do this the legal way. Who’d have the jurisdiction over this if we can prove all these cases are connected? Crossing all these state lines, it’d be the FBI or something, right, so we should get in contact with them?”

“SHIELD could handle it.” 

Clint speaks quietly, but everyone looks at him all the same. He shrugs. “SHIELD has the resources and the connections,” he points out. “And if we pull rank, we’d get to stay on the mission. Wouldn’t have to hand it off to anyone.”

Tony decides, then and there, that it’s the best idea presented. “Then we’ll do that,” he says, and has his phone out before the others are aware he’s dialed Fury’s number. He sets it to speaker, and places it in front of his empty plate on the glossy table.

The phone rings twice, and then the other line opens.

“Are you aware,” a very dangerously annoyed voice asks, “what time it is?”

“Hello to you, too,” Tony says brightly. “We’re calling in a favor.”

“Stark, calling me at ten-forty-five p.m. means that I am out of the office. When I am out of the office, it means that I am not to be disturbed unless the world itself is at stake. Is the world itself at stake, Stark, or did I miss something?”

“Maddie Foster was kidnapped yesterday.” Tony glances down the table to Jane, with her still-red eyes. “I’d say that there are plenty of people who have their worlds at stake.”

There’s silence on the other end of the phone. Tony is damn sure that Fury knows where the team is, and why, and so he just waits.

“And?” the director bites off after several seconds.

“We want the case.”

“What?”

“We want it. SHIELD can get the authority to investigate this, right? Officially. We want it.”

“Sir.” And Barton’s coming around the table to stand nearer the phone. “We have reason to suspect the kidnapping ties in to a larger, established ring that’s been in operation for over five years. With official authority, we’ll have access to police files across the U.S. and we’ll be able to pursue the suspects without waiting for civilian departments to respond.”

Only SHIELD agents, Tony thinks, would consider the FBI civilians.

There is another long pause from the other end of the phone. “You realize,” Fury drawls out eventually, “that official authority to investigate this comes with official reports being filed, regularly, so that SHIELD is aware of the operation.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Tony agrees instantly. “You got it.”

There’s another pause. “Give me twelve hours to put things into motion,” Fury says. “I want the first report on Agent Hill’s desk within twenty-four hours. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Clint says, and there’s a great deal of head nodding from around the table that Fury can’t see.

“Good.” And Fury’s tone changes, goes from abrupt to nearly amused. “It’s all yours.” 

The dial tone sounds.

“That was far too easy,” Tony says after a minute. 

“He assigned us Hill,” Natasha murmurs.

“We’re always assigned to Hill,” Steve points out, and she shakes her head.

“The Avengers are always assigned to Hill when there’s something big enough to warrant her attention,” she says. “Global invasion, large military forces, extraterrestrial magic destroying cities. But for this, we should have been shuffled off to – who, Larson? Phillips?” She frowns, tilting her face towards Barton as though she expects him to know the answer.

Clint returns to his seat. “Fury wants us to work this,” he agrees, and gestures back at the phone. “He gave us Hill.”

“Right,” Tony agrees, not willing to get into SHIELD politics and which agent handles what. He’s got the two agents he needs, and he’s got the clearance he needs, so he could care less about who they’ll be reporting to the next day. “So, what’s on our list for tomorrow?”

“Investigate the Joneses,” Bruce says promptly. “With SHIELD’s resources I can access even sealed files on them, so something’s bound to pop up.”

“Good,” Tony says, and looks around the table. “Number two.”

“Adoptions.” Steve tilts his head to the side as he considers it. “We should put an alert out, keep tabs on any adoptions happening today, tomorrow, this week, next month. Maddie might show up there.”

“Number three,” Clint adds, before Tony can say anything. “Adoption agencies. Find ones that match our time frame, start to narrow the list down.”

“Can we not also find the missing children?” Thor asks. He waves a hand towards the computer, still displaying the dozens of unsolved cases. “Surely with so many missing there are some that can be found.”

“Good thought.” Tony points at Thor. “Age-progression software, identification searches, police records from the original investigations. Number four.”

“Five,” Natasha continues. “Not necessarily in order. Search the house we bought today. I want to see if they were stupid enough to leave anything else behind.”

“And six,” Tony finishes up with a flourish. “Still not necessarily in order, but…” He looks to Jane. “I want to talk to your family again. They deserve to know that we’re looking into this, officially.”

“They should look at the picture of the Joneses,” Bruce reminds him, even as Jane nods. “With what Natasha said last night – maybe they’ll recognize one of them.”

Tony considers that, likes the idea. “Good. So tomorrow, who’s doing what?”

Clint and Natasha share a glance between them, a half-nod that somehow manages, in that strange way they have, to encapsulate a full conversation. “We’ll take the house,” Barton says, and leans back in his chair, relaxed, even as Natasha leans forward, intense. “And we’ll start tracking the Joneses, once there’s something to track.”

“I can do that,” Bruce volunteers, lifting a hand almost like he were in class. “I know how Tony’s systems work, and if Director Fury’s allowing us SHIELD access, I can search bank accounts, plane tickets, real estate…”

“I’ll take adoption agencies,” Steve says. He pushes his empty plate forward. “Check into their histories, get a list of current adoptions in progress. Hopefully I can confirm Dr. Banner’s theories.”

Tony nods, points at Thor. “You and me, Lightning Boy, we’ll go talk with the Fosters.”

“Yes,” he agrees, and glances over his shoulder, towards the tall windows and beyond, where Seattle sparkles in the night. “Will we stay here, or return back to the Tower?”

It’s a good question, one Tony hasn’t considered. He blinks, tilts his head. “Pros and cons?” he asks, and isn’t surprised when the rest of the group looks just as perplexed.

Natasha shrugs. “We’ll be following the Joneses either way,” she points out. “So count us out of wherever we’re going. Also, we’ll need a car.”

Tony waves his hand. “You’ve got the company card, Red, use it if you need it.” She scowls, but doesn’t comment on the nickname; Tony files that away for future thought: she apparently won’t kill him for it if the situation is serious enough. Duly noted, he thinks, and moves on.

“I’m thinking New York,” he says after a quiet moment. “I can run more searches from the Tower, have access to more programs.”

Thor shakes his head. “I will stay here,” he announces, and takes Jane’s hand. “I wish to be close to the Fosters, should the need arise.”

Tony glances at Steve, sees the soldier consider his options. “I’ll stay here too,” he says abruptly, which surprises Tony a bit. He glances over. “You can set me up with what I’ll need to run searches, things like that, while I’m here?”

“Sure,” Tony agrees, and he’s already thinking of his L.A. house, the equipment he still keeps there, and how it’s barely two hours by plane from L.A. to Seattle. Less, if it’s a private Stark Industries jet, he thinks, and nods. “Done.”

“Then I guess I’ll go with Tony back east,” Bruce says uncertainly. He looks around the table. “Don’t want to send anyone alone,” he explains a bit sheepishly. “And my systems are all set up there; I can run some calculations, maybe,” and he nods at Natasha and Clint, “help get into some security feeds to help track the Joneses.”

“Good.” And Tony pushes back from the table, stands and starts to pace. “We’ll get everything all squared away tomorrow, meet again tomorrow night. That work for everyone?”

There’s general agreement, and Tony isn’t surprised. Bruce is glancing back at his computer, as though he’d rather be working in front of it; Clint’s tapping his fingers along his leg, nervous energy, a far-away look in his eyes as though he were already planning something. Steve is sitting perfectly straight, nearly at attention in his chair, but his eyes are focused and bright. Thor and Jane are solid, united and honest and brave, and Natasha has her head just slightly tilted, her face just slightly too calm for her to not be up to something.

They’re ready to be doing, not thinking, and so Tony smiles grimly. “Good,” he repeats, and stalks towards the computer. “Then let’s see what we can do tonight.”


	7. Section 1: Natasha

# Natasha

“You’ve got to be tired of this,” Steve tells her as they leave the bar in a crowd of drunk college students.

Natasha looks around her at the fraternity boys in tight polo shirts, the sorority girls with matching silver bracelets, the older students comfortable enough to hit the bar on their own. “I can’t say college bars are really my scene,” she admits wryly, and steps close up to him. He knows how to play along, and slings an arm around her shoulders. She’s grateful for that: 2 a.m. on an October night in Seattle is hardly the place to be wearing a tight clubbing top, and his arm is warm.

“I wasn’t thinking so much the bar as the situation,” Steve clarifies, maneuvering them through the crowd of laughing and shouting students toward the street corner.

“What, having a few drinks?” she asks. “We’ve barely been here an hour.”

Steve hails a cab with the innate skill of someone from New York, and holds the door open for her to slide across the seat ahead of him. Natasha glances at the cabbie – a Sikh, she thinks, with tired eyes and a neatly-wrapped dark turban – and then plasters herself against Steve as he sits beside her and gives the driver the address of Tony’s newest house.

The cabbie gives them a weary look in the rearview mirror, but pulls away from the corner with a smooth start. Natasha gives her best airheaded giggle, and worms her way onto Steve’s lap. “How far to your place?” she questions, and then rests her head on his shoulder.

He turns his head into hers, so that he can speak quietly enough into her hair that the cabbie can’t hear him. “I meant,” he tells her evenly, even as his hands come up to hold onto her waist – more, she thinks, to keep her anchored since she’s not wearing a seatbelt, and less to establish their cover, “don’t you ever get tired of playing girlfriend whichever one of us works out best for the mission?”

She giggles again, sees the cab driver sigh and ignore them, and tilts her head so she can speak more or less into his ear. “It’s been worse,” she tells him. “Believe me, much worse.” She’s not lying: she’s pretended interest in far worse male specimens than her team members, and as partners go, she at least trusts each of them with her life.

“Still,” Steve insists, and his hands tense around her waist, shift her more completely into his lap as the cab swings out onto the highway from the on-ramp. He’s muscled differently than Clint, she thinks, and she’s used to the way Clint’s compact muscles feel beneath her legs instead of Steve’s rangy strength. “What with going out with Bruce last time, I think you’ve been paired up with all of us now.”

Natasha considers, a bit surprised, and flips through her recollections. He’s right, of course; Steve notices these things, even if he doesn’t always point them out. But she’s pretended involvement with all of her teammates, at some point or another: she was Tony’s mistress when they went to that Aegean island dealing with the Moroccan arms-runner, and she’s been Thor’s girlfriend more times than she can count, mainly to stand beside him and cling to his arm and tug him away from attracting too much attention to himself. She’s paired so consistently with Clint that she has Natalie’s wedding rings in the purse tucked under her arm, for tomorrow, and Steve has found himself partnered with her enough that he shifts her weight on his legs almost automatically to adjust for their height difference so they can continue talking. She played Bruce’s wife mere hours ago, and, thinking on it now, she realizes that he had been the last of her teammates to take on a role opposite her.

“Hm,” is all she can come up with, and that just makes Steve smile. 

“You really don’t mind, do you?” he says, amused, just loud enough for the cabbie’s eyes to flicker back to them and then back to the road. “I’d wondered.”

She laughs, mostly to distract the cabbie and partly because Steve is the only one of her companions to actually ask her about these things. Clint knows better than to worry about her; Bruce and Thor might wonder, but would consider it impolite to ask; and Tony, if the thought occurred to him, would find it all hilarious and never contemplate the idea that she didn’t view it as amusing as he did.

“Not really,” she says with a smile he can’t see. “Like I said…”

“It could be worse,” he finishes dryly with her. “Sometime I’ll have to ask you about that.”

She’s still smiling when she shakes her head. “Be careful what you wish for,” is all she can offer in response to that.

They’re more or less quiet for the rest of the ride: every now and then Natasha will giggle, or murmur something into Steve’s ear, and he’s learned that if he tickles the corner of her hip she’ll squirm and squeal almost involuntarily. Clint’s the only other person who knows about that particular weakness, but she doesn’t mind Steve’s knowledge: unlike others she can think of, he never uses it inappropriately. 

Steve’s also gotten into the habit of trying to explain baseball to her when they’re out together on missions. Natasha has to admit that it’s a good cover; he’s so earnestly excited about baseball that it makes him look focused and somewhat adorably passionate, which is a good look for someone who is supposedly out on a date. So she lets him tell her all about the intricacies of foul balls, in quiet tones too low for the cabbie to make out, until the tired driver pulls to a stop in front of the house.

She slips out of the car ahead of Steve, lets him pay the driver – who is no doubt relieved that they were a pair of tipsy, quietly amorous adults rather than the boisterous, overly affectionate college drunks, and, if he remembers them at all, will remember them vaguely – and walks ahead of him up the steps to Tony’s newest house. 

The For Sale sign is gone, and Natasha has to admit that for all her never-ending chatter, Mary is quite an efficient realtor. The lockbox is still on the door, though, so she fumbles through her purse looking for keys that aren’t there until Steve joins her on the front step and the cab is turning the far corner.

Then she pulls out a slender steel wire and gets to work, with Steve positioned behind her to block any line of sight from the road. The lockbox comes off easily enough; the door is a bit trickier, but not out of her skill range. She locks up behind herself after she and Steve pass the threshold, and they stand together in the darkened house.

“Well,” Steve says after a pause. “It’s nicer than I expected.”

“It’s a Craftsman bungalow,” Natasha tells him absently, moving through the room to check the tells she’d planted hours earlier. “The Foster house will have more or less the same floorplan.” 

The hair she’d positioned along the sofa is untouched, and the little piece of fringe on the front rug is still tucked in the same position she’d left it. She reaches into her purse for a flashlight, and flicks it on. Most of the house is still furnished, in the bare, decorated style of a home that’s been on the market long enough that the sellers don’t really expect much from it anymore. When she’d been here in the daylight with Bruce and Mary, it had made the home look simple and clean; now, by the glow of an LED flashlight, it looks stark and bare and deserted.

“Nothing’s been disturbed here,” she says, checking the dust by the windowsill. She passes her flashlight to Steve, who moves ahead of her through the house. He stops at doors with military precision, scanning beyond them before moving through them, and she wonders if he’s familiar with urban warfare from how he moves. Did they do that in World War II? She’ll have to check.

Still, he efficiently clears the house, checking each of the rooms on the first floor before going up the creaking stairs to the small, converted attic of the second floor. There’s a master bedroom at the eastern end, with a big picture window looking down into the quiet, darkened street beyond it, and he stops there. “This is where you found the binoculars?” he asks.

Natasha’s holding up her Stark Industries phone, scanning for bugs and communication devices, but either none were ever installed or none were left behind. So as the scan comes up clean, she slips the phone back into her purse. “There,” she says, and points at the bedside table. “I didn’t have time to look for anything else.”

He just shrugs. “Just tell me what to do,” he says, and she appreciates that he’s willing to hand control of the operation over to her.

So she directs him to canvas the first floor for anything out of place, and takes the second floor herself. It’s a converted attic, with low ceilings near the outside walls and strangely placed windows: there’s a master bedroom in the front, a smaller bedroom on each side, and a tiny bathroom between the master bedroom and one of the children’s rooms.

She finds nothing in the bedrooms, but the bathroom yields results: travel-size shampoo and conditioner bottles in the miniscule shower, with a half-used bar of soap and a cheap plastic razor. She collects them carefully, touching them through plastic bags to not leave her own fingerprints, and goes downstairs to find Steve in the kitchen.

“Any luck?” she asks him.

He gestures at the refrigerator. “There’s nothing in the fridge,” he says, “but it’s turned on, and everything else isn’t.”

Natasha considers, and then crosses to the sink. There’s a trash can there – and it’s half full. She grimaces. “They always forget the trash,” she murmurs, and hands the bagged evidence from the upstairs shower to Steve. “These need to go to Bruce,” she tells him, and searches for and finds an unused trash bag. 

Steve studies the little bottles of hair product. “You can buy them this small?” he asks, and sets them down by her purse on the counter.

She smiles tightly. “Not usually. Those are probably from a hotel somewhere – maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll be from a specific hotel we can track.” She spreads the trash bag over the clean kitchen floor, and upends the half-full trash can over it. Garbage spills out onto the white plastic; she sets the empty trash bin aside.

Steve wrinkles his nose. “Someone did some cleaning,” he says, and, proving himself a decent man, he squats down beside her to start pulling out wet-wipes from the pile of trash. They’re almost overpoweringly scented with lemon, and there’s a huge heap of them. 

“The bathroom, probably,” Natasha guesses. “They got everything up out of the sink, but forgot to check the shower.”

“Unprofessional?” Steve asks, and she considers.

“Yes and no,” she says at last, picking out pieces of paper from the garbage and smoothing them out. “Professional enough to be set up for a few days worth of hiding out, but rushed enough at the end to forget the little things you don’t see – the trash under the sink, the stuff behind the shower curtain. Still…” She picks up a wrapper for an energy bar. “Smart enough about it – there’s no food in here that will rot or really stink the place up, so if we hadn’t been looking for things like this, someone could buy the house, move in, and never really be any wiser about what it’d been used for.”

“Huh,” is all Steve says, and they sort through the trash in companionable silence. It’s mainly cleaning wipes and energy bar wrappers, and Natasha counts them. “How many of these things can you eat in a day?” she asks Steve.

He looks at the little plastic wrapper in her hand. “Am I allowed to eat anything else?”

“No.”

“Lots.”

She snorts out a laugh before she can censor herself, and then shakes her head. “This many wrappers, two people… what do you think, three days? Four?”

“They’d need more food than that,” Steve argues. “And what are they drinking?”

“Want to check the dishwasher?” she suggests.

It’s empty, which means they either brought their own drinks or their own cups, and lugged it all out again. She finds a receipt for a soft-sided cooler from a local grocery store, along with the cooler’s price tag; there are two more receipts in the trash, both for some pre-made sandwiches from the shop two blocks over. Paid in cash, she notes with disappointment.

There’s one last receipt in the bin, crumpled up into a ball, and she carefully unwraps it. “Nice,” she says after a moment of staring at it, and shows it to Steve. “Here, Cap, have a look.”

He studies it, and then lets out a low whistle. “Tony can track this,” he says, handing it back to her. “Can’t he?”

“Oh, yes,” she assures him with a smile. “Not only did they pay for everything with a credit card, but this is a big enough order that whoever rung them up might remember it.” She glances down at the receipt again: baby clothes, diapers, blankets, a stroller… “Tony should be able to track the card, too, so if they’re using it for hotels, we’ll be able to follow them as they use it.”

They comb through the rest of the house for more evidence, but after another hour, Natasha admits there’s not much else to find. “I bet Tony can track the shampoo stuff too,” Steve points out. “Like you said, it might narrow down the hotels.”

He flops down onto the couch, and she settles into the easy chair next to it. It’s just past four in the morning now, and she clicks off her flashlight so that the room is illuminated only by the dim glow of the streetlight a house down the road. “I’ll leave those with you,” she tells him. “Clint will be here as soon as he can get a car – when are you all going to meet with the Fosters?”

“After ten,” Steve replies, and then yawns. “Once Tony wakes up.”

She leans back in her chair. “Want to set watches?” she asks, though she’s not truly concerned: the Joneses are long gone with Maddie, and no one else is likely to investigate an empty house. 

He doesn’t appear too worried either; she hears the couch creak as he shrugs. “If you want.” There’s a long pause, and then he speaks again. “Last night, when we were going through things – you talked like you’ve done something like this before.”

It’s not a question, really – just a statement, simple and blameless. Because he’s phrased it that way, because he’s not demanding answers or explanations, Natasha lets out a deep, slow breath. “Something like this,” she admits, and then, because she does trust him, because he’s proven to be a friend and a comrade in arms, she gives more of herself than she would have otherwise: “Before I worked with SHIELD, I… came across some places that weren’t very kind to children. I didn’t do much, at first, but…” She trails off, struggles with wording. She trusts Steve, certainly, but there are parts of her own past that even she shies away from. 

“But you eventually removed a few children from those places,” Steve interjects. “Probably without telling whoever was in charge of them what you were doing.”

She remembers their eyes the most: the trainers with flint-sharp glints of purpose and cruelty and even pride; guards with flat eyes, wary and suspicious and brittle; the girls with their beautiful, child-like eyes dulled and clouded by drugs and pain and conditioning. She remembers the ones she couldn’t pull away from their brainwashing, eyes full of hate and desperation and cunning, and knows that her own eyes once looked the same. It still makes her shiver.

“Something like that,” she says simply, and does her best to shut out the memories.

Steve gives a little huff, what might have been “huh” or just a noisy breath. “Where did you take the kids?” he asks.

“Hospitals, mostly.” She shuts her eyes, doesn’t mention the word _morgue_.

Steve doesn’t ask more questions. Instead, after a long pause, he asks, “You don’t happen to have rations or anything in that purse of yours, do you?”

She goes to the kitchen to retrieve her purse, and hands him a granola bar. He takes it gratefully, and she drops the purse beside her chair. There’s not much else in it – it’s Natalie’s purse, with only a few of Natasha’s belongings in there, but it was the best she could do with little warning. She thinks of the list she gave Clint, gives a little sigh, and hopes he can find most of what she requested.

“You can sleep, if you want,” Steve offers quietly, tucking away his granola bar wrapper into his pocket. “I’ll stay up.”

She debates her options, and then nods. “Thanks,” she says, and settles back into her chair. “Wake me up at six?”

He makes a little noncommittal noise, so Natasha smiles, shuts her eyes, and drops asleep knowing he’ll wake her late.

True to her prediction, when he rouses her with a gentle hand and a quiet, “Agent Romanov?” it’s seven-forty-five. 

He’s a bit rumpled, a bit tired, but he smiles at her all the same. It prompts her to point out, “I’ve said you can call me Natasha, you know.”

At that, he grins, and no longer looks tired. “And as soon as you stop calling me Captain, I will,” he returns, and they smile at each other in perfect wry understanding. “Anyway, it’s a quarter to eight; I figured you’d want to check in with Barton.”

She stretches, goes into the downstairs bathroom to brush her teeth and run fingers through her hair, and just as she emerges back out into the living room, her phone beeps at her. It’s a text from Clint: _0930, 55th and Keystone._

The corner he names, according to the map on her phone, is about four blocks away. There’s a coffee shop on the corner – of course there is, she tells herself, it’s Seattle – so she looks up at Steve. “Breakfast?” she asks, and he agrees instantly.

It’s a grey, cloudy morning, damp and chill. She locks the house behind them, and they walk the few blocks to the coffee shop. Steve orders enough to feed three people, and goes across the street for donuts besides; Natasha thinks of accelerated growth serums and caloric intake requirements and shakes her head. Even though it’s chilly, they’re not the only ones sitting outside at patio tables on the grim October morning.

“It’s Saturday,” she says aloud, bringing her mug of tea to the table.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees absently. His eyes harden, just a shade, and he looks at her and says simply, “Forty-two hours.”

She thinks of Maddie, missing and away from home and family, and nods.

They eat in silence, until she asks to try one of his donuts and he regales her with the story of a little shop in Brooklyn where he used to get hand-made donut holes by the dozen for fifteen cents. This, of course, prompts her to tell him about the best French crepes she’s had at a shop in Quebec, and by the time Clint pulls up to the curb beside the coffee shop in a rather shiny hybrid, Steve’s eaten his entire breakfast order and Natasha’s stolen two of his donuts and went across the street herself to get a bag of donut holes.

She hands the bag to Clint as he comes to join them. “Breakfast,” she tells him, and he gives her a thankful smile as he greets Steve.

“How’d it go?” he asks, and opens the bag for his first donut hole.

“Fairly well,” Steve says, and gestures at Natasha. “She’ll fill you in. Is there anything else I can help with before you take off?”

Clint just shrugs, and Natasha knows Steve will forward them any information he and Tony can find on the shampoo bottles and credit card receipts. So she shakes her head. “Just get that paperwork turned in,” she says.

Steve rolls his eyes. “Trust me, I’ll do it,” he says, and they share a grin: between the two of them, they’ve all but taken over any paperwork the Avengers require. Tony never finishes his reports; Bruce tends to write detailed tomes of speculation and explanation, given he barely remembers half of what he does when he’s green; Thor’s reports are entertaining but generally wildly inaccurate; and Clint’s are military precise and amazingly sparse. Steve, at least, writes both plausible and useful reports, and Natasha is vaguely relieved that his are even better than hers, so that she isn’t saddled with all the paperwork the team generates.

“I’ll send you a copy,” he adds, and shakes hands with Clint. “Have a safe drive.”

They leave him happily drinking coffee outside the shop. 

“I didn’t expect something this… new,” Natasha tells Clint, refraining from mentioning she hadn’t expected the archer to choose a hybrid car, of all things, either: she knows him well enough to know his taste runs towards Fords and trucks and motorcycles.

He lifts an eyebrow at her, as though he hears her unspoken surprise. “Tony insisted,” he says, and starts the engine with the push of a button. “I think he has plans for it afterwards.”

“Mm,” she says, and fastens her seatbelt. “You know where we’re going?”

“More or less,” he says carelessly. “I did my best with your list, but we might have to pick up some supplies along the way.”

“Okay.” She glances in the backseat, at the shopping bags piled haphazardly behind her, and winces. “I’ll go through it our first stop. We found some things at the house last night.” And she explains the contents of the shower and the trash can as he merges onto the highway.

“The little travel bottles – I bet they’re from a hotel,” Clint points out, following her previous thought. “Know which one?”

“Steve’s going to look into it,” she explains. “Hopefully it’s a chain, and hopefully they stick with it – between that and the credit card number, it’ll make tracking them easier.”

“Cool.” He reaches for another donut hole. “Spokane’s about five hours east of here – I figure that will be our first stop. If they left Seattle in the afternoon, I don’t see them driving further in a day anyway, not with a baby in the car.”

“All right.” She settles back into her seat. “The car’s comfortable, at least. When do you think we’ll hear from everyone else?”

“Probably around lunchtime – there’s a few towns we can swing through, pick something up and keep moving.” He glances at the center console, fiddles with the radio, and then gives up to keep his eyes on the road. “Find me some music, will you?”

She’s gone on too many road trips with him for this not to be a habit: she plays with the radio until she finds him a country station, and adjusts the volume so they can still talk over it.

They don’t talk too much, though, the first few hours. It’s a pretty drive, Natasha can admit, climbing up away from the city on a highway surrounded by dense forest. The highway narrows to two lanes the higher they climb, until they reach the mountain pass and discover it’s dusted with snow. Still, there’s not an inclement weather warning, and while it’s cold out, there’s no ice on the road. They take turns reading the signs, trying to pronounce Native American place names, and looking up how wrong they are on Natasha’s phone. 

The terrain changes once they come down the pass, from steep tangled forests with deep underbrush to rolling hills and finally dusty farmlands. It starts raining just as they cross the Columbia River, on a narrow bridge wedged into a deep gorge, and the windshield wipers hum along with the car’s quiet engine. Once they climb out of the Columbia’s canyon, though, the land spreads out in front of them for miles of straight furrowed earth, and Natasha stares out the window at signs tacked onto fences along the highway to read what the farmers have planted.

“It’s funny not to see corn and soy beans,” Clint says, when she tells him that the fields are clover and wheat and potatoes, and she laughs and teases him for his Midwestern upbringing.

They stop for sandwiches and gas in a town called Moses Lake, where the highway seems to drive straight over the lake itself. Natasha takes the time to check through the shopping bags in the back seat, and admits Clint did relatively well: she changes out of the clubbing clothes she’s been stuck in since the night before and into jeans, a long-sleeve shirt, hiking boots, and a brown zip-up vest to keep her from the cold wind. They’re even her size, which she appreciates, and she digs through the rest of the shopping bags to set herself up in the passenger seat as Clint maneuvers them back onto the highway.

There’s a laptop, which she assumes is from Pepper in New York, and it’s set up to access the network even from the middle of the road in Washington. So she opens it up and starts researching as Clint turns up the radio and starts singing along to the country songs as he drives. It’s a habit of his, one she doesn’t mind: he sings absently, hums along with some songs and knows the words to others, and his voice is nice enough that she enjoys the sound of it even if she doesn’t know the song he’s singing.

She’s frowning at the dozens of hotel options in Spokane, and they’re debating the merits of splitting up to go through the city’s numerous hotels when her phone rings.

It’s Bruce. “You’re not driving, are you?” he asks after saying hello.

She reassures him that Clint’s driving, and he turns down the radio. “We’re about an hour past Moses Lake,” she tells him, and she hears faint typing, as though he’s looking up their route on the computer.

“We’ve made some progress,” he tells her, and she listens attentively and takes notes until Tony shouts something in the background about meeting the police and isn’t he ready yet?

“We’ll check in at Spokane,” she promises Bruce, and adds, “Good luck with Tony,” which makes him laugh before he hangs up.

“I heard something about hotels,” Clint says, and turns the radio back up. 

“The shampoo is from a Freedom Inn,” she relays, already typing in a search on the laptop. “National chain, rewards program, and… there’s one in Spokane and one in Coeur d’Alene. That’ll narrow it down.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees, with the hint of a smile. “Any news on the credit card?”

“Tony’s pulling some strings,” she tells him, and stares at the directions to the hotels. She sends them both to her phone, and then shuts down the laptop. “You’re good to keep driving?”

He raises a single eyebrow, and turns up the music.

They get lucky at the first Freedom Inn, a hotel that looks like it caters mostly to business travelers just east of Spokane’s downtown with a view of the river. While they step up to the desk to ask about a room for the night, Natasha comments about a small family in the lobby.

“I didn’t really picture this as a family hotel,” she says with a smile, and the young clerk rolls her eyes.

“It’s not, really,” she says. “We had a baby in two nights ago that wouldn’t stop screaming – we had to comp two rooms around it just to make up for all the noise.”

Natasha winces sympathetically, keeps her smile on her face. “Probably teething,” she says knowingly. “I’m sure the parents were exhausted.”

“Pretty much,” the girl agrees with a grin. “They left really early in the morning, so I don’t think they got too much sleep, either. The mom gave a pretty good tip, though, so at least they were trying to be nice about everything. Now, I’ve put you two in room 220, will that be all right?”

“As long as it’s not near screaming babies,” Clint says with good humor, and the clerk laughs. 

“Completely the other side of the hotel from where we put the families,” she assures him as he signs for the room. “Do you need any assistance with your bags?”

They decline assistance, and go up into 220 just long enough to call Steve. “They stayed here in Spokane,” Natasha tells Steve, and explains the whole story from the clerk as Clint uses the shower. “We’ll go a bit farther today, and check in again once we know more.”

They rumple the bed sheets, strew towels around the bathroom floor, and leave their key cards beside the tv before they return to the parking lot and their car. Natasha takes the driver seat this time, and after Clint pulls up a list of Freedom Inns ahead of them, he cranks his seat back and shuts his eyes.

Natasha drives until the sun sets, into Idaho and through the steep mountain pass into Montana. It’s dark by the time they pull into Missoula, and she keeps driving: it’s only been three hours from Spokane, and she’s sure Avery and Kitty Jones wouldn’t stop so close to their last hotel, not when they’d awoken early for a long day of travel.

She stops in Butte for gas, and Clint wakes enough to squint at the map. Interstate 15 crosses I-90, running north and south just around Butte, and they look at turning south. But when Natasha slides behind the wheel again, she follows her instinct and keeps going east. The decision pays off in a few more hours, when they reach Billings and a Freedom Inn that remembers young parents stopping in for the previous night. By now, Bruce has forwarded them pictures of the Joneses, and when Natasha mentions they’re trying to catch up with her older sister and shows off a picture of Kitty Jones, the front desk clerk is all too happy to recognize her and point out that they stayed a night and left early in the morning.

“They’re still a day ahead of us,” Natasha points out, as she and Clint study the satellite map in their darkened car in the parking lot. “And the freeway forks – which way do you think they went?”

They frown together at the glowing computer screen, and then Clint points. “We’ll stay on I-90,” he decides. “I-94 keeps too far north – the only option there is Minneapolis. I-90 gives us more to work with.”

So they eat greasy burgers at a truck stop, and Natasha pays two dollars to use a shower behind the diner while Clint fills up the car and plots their route further east. It’s still dark when they pull out of Billings, and Natasha’s uneasy: there are a lot of cities ahead of them, and at this point, there’s the risk of overtaking their quarry, leapfrogging over them in the night and losing the trail.

Still, it’s her turn to sleep, and so she leans the passenger seat back. Clint turns down the radio for her, and she drifts asleep to the sound of the highway under the tires.

She dreams of a crying baby with dull, drugged eyes, and dreams she’s looking for her and can’t find her. She finds herself awake after only a few hours when she knows – _knows_ , with that certainty dreams bring – that there is a trainer looking at her with eyes glinting cold in the darkness.

She drifts awake slowly, heart pounding full of dread, and stays where she is, curled up in the passenger seat with her seatbelt awkwardly twisted behind her. It takes time for her to make sense of her surroundings, and she stays still until the world makes sense again. Her brain slowly starts to catch up with where she is: the wheels are still humming against the road, and the radio is playing a country song full of slow harmony and melancholy lyrics. 

She opens her eyes, a bit blearily, glances at the clock and then at Clint. “Doing okay?” he asks, noticing her movement.

She adjusts her positioning, and moves her arm so that she can rest her hand on his where it rests on the center console. “Yeah,” she says, voice rough with sleep. “Bad dreams.”

He glances over at her as they pass under a sign; the light illuminates his rather battered face, and she can read the concern there. But he doesn’t say anything, just turns his hand so that he can lace his fingers with hers, and then focuses on the road again.

She’s only gotten a few hours of sleep, but she’s not going to try for more. She adjusts her seat upright again, and stares out the window into the darkness. Road signs flash by, illuminated for a second by headlights and then gone into the night, and there are few other cars to blind her with headlights at this time of night.

They drive in silence for a comfortable half hour. Then, as a new song comes on the radio, Clint picks it up, starts to sing along.

His voice is low and near in the darkness, and her heartbeat slows as she listens to him sing. She’s heard the song before, something about weather and leaving love behind, and she likes the way Clint’s voice rises and falls with the melody. When he sings a country song, he gains just that hint of a country accent, a twang she doesn’t hear from him regularly, and it makes her think of simpler lives neither of them will ever lead.

So she leans her head against the car door and listens, and falls asleep before she realizes what she’s done.

This time, she doesn't dream.


	8. Interlude 1: Pepper

# Interlude: Pepper

It’s Pepper’s job to remember things.

Even though her job description has changed dozens – hundreds – of times since she was first hired on as Tony’s assistant all those years ago, she still thinks that her first job description was perhaps the most accurate, the most honest.

_Your job_ , Tony had written on a small post-it note stuck to the bigger, more formal new-hire packet she’d received, _is to remember things so I don’t have to._

She still has that little note, though the sticky has long since worn off the back, and it’s a bit creased from being moved to one computer station to another. By the time Tony finally got her a laptop, she gave up on taping it to various screens and just laminated the little piece of paper instead, and tucked it into her purse behind her business cards.

She’d die – absolutely die – if Tony knew she still has it, so she doesn’t bring it up, doesn’t mention it, and definitely, definitely, doesn’t let Tony go through her purse. But then, that last is simply a smart move, around Tony: he has no qualms at all about going through things, and some things, women’s purses among them, should remain sacred.

But still, she considers that little scrawled note to be her basic job description, and twelve title changes, fourteen pay raises, four expense accounts, one kidnapping, and one heroic group of allies later, Pepper still goes out of her way to remember things.

Over time, she’s become quite adept at remembering, and because of it, learning, always with an eye towards what will come up in Tony’s frequent, rambling conversations. So she remembers, for instance, how to swear in Chinese and Arabic, how to hot wire a car (at least in theory), and why the sky is blue instead of green. She’s able to handle sudden, abrupt requests for the melting point of titanium or the name of the New York state senator who likes the Yankees the least. 

Pepper is perfectly willing to admit that having a smartphone with easy, instant internet access and to-do lists and notes has made her job amazingly easier, and travels nowhere without the phone Tony gave her.

But now she’s home, in the tower, and she can use JARVIS and Tony’s overpowered desktop computer instead of her phone, so she leans back into her plush chair and eyes the holographic display thoughtfully.

“JARVIS,” she says at last. “Could you bring up a picture of Maddie Foster, please?”

“Certainly, Miss Potts,” the calm voice responds, and the dancing dots of light coalesce into the face of a very young baby.

Pepper has a niece herself, and two nephews, and feels the tug at her heart as she stares at the picture.

“And a map, please?” she asks. She always says please to JARVIS – Tony thinks it’s funny, or worse, cute; to Pepper, it’s basic courtesy.

“Of course.” The world floats beside Maddie on the screen. “Any particular area, madam?”

“The report that Tony sent on yesterday,” she tells the AI, and the screen flashes and fades to a map of the United States, little glowing dots pulsing where babies have gone missing. 

There’s one in New York, she sees – not the city itself, but Syracuse. She touches the glowing city, and sees the information on the baby pop up beside the city. The baby boy is bright brown eyes and smooth black skin, held in the arms of a young, smiling couple. _Cody Grant_ , she reads with a sinking heart, _age two weeks and four days._ She looks at the date he was reported missing, and winces: he’s been away from the beaming couple in the picture for five years.

She shrinks Cody’s picture so she doesn’t have to look at the happy faces of his parents.

“JARVIS,” she asks after another few minutes of studying the board, “Can you flag the hotels Clint and Natasha found?”

The hotels light up in green, soft against the gold of the rest of the map. Pepper frowns at them. She calculates hours in her head, changes a setting on the computer, and traces their route with her finger. “Can we predict the next city?” she asks.

“We can predict their route,” JARVIS tells her, and the highways light like streams of fire, following I-90 into the Midwest. “But without knowing their final destination, there are too many possible decision points to make an accurate final prediction.” The streams of fire reach a major city and split, forking out into smaller streams that spiderweb across the map.

Still, there are several cities lit now as strong potentials. Pepper considers, and then saves the information to forward to Tony. Then she turns back to the map. “There has to be something else,” she murmurs, more to herself than to JARVIS. 

But he responds all the same. “If I may, madam,” he says, and the map on the screen splits again. “I’ve taken the liberty of calculating travel routes from the affected cities to various other locations within the United States.” Highways flare up and light, traveling away from cities glowing gold with missing children. “Taking into account distinct parameters, I believe we can narrow our search to select cities, and thus eliminate the extraneous destinations from our route predictions.”

Pepper watches the map light and dim in front of her. “What are your parameters?” she asks, fascinated, and the map on the right grows larger.

“Dr. Banner has postulated that the city will require a strong state government infrastructure to facilitate any adoption paperwork,” JARVIS explains, and across the map, state capitols and major population centers flare bright red. “I have assumed that, as the Joneses seem to be traveling east, we may eliminate any western cities that they have already traveled past.” Most of the west coast goes dark; the Midwest and East Coast continue to glow. 

It still leaves a depressingly large number of cities glowing red on the map. “It doesn’t narrow the search completely,” Pepper says.

“Indeed, madam,” JARVIS responds, and the map shifts, and moves to overlay the other map, where projected routes still glow. “However, it does eliminate several potential routes.” And the lights dim off of the map. “And if we assume that the main location of the operation was chosen for ease of access, we can eliminate more.”

“Ease of access?” Pepper asks, and stands to better study the map.

“Dr. Banner has theorized that since the method of transportation seen so far to transport stolen infants is by car, then the headquarters of the organization is likely located in a city conducive to travel by highway. Further, using the locations of previously stolen infants, we can suppose that this main location is to be found in a spot roughly equidistant from the majority of cities with missing infants.”

Lights flare and dim across the map like flickering candles, and Pepper shakes her head to clear it. “But how…” and she trails off, staring up at the map.

“Dr. Banner has created several equations,” and JARVIS almost sounds apologetic. “I could go in to further detail, if you would care to-” 

“No,” Pepper says firmly, because she draws the line at remembering Bruce’s statistical samplings for Tony. “Thank you, JARVIS. Could you map a radius, instead, doing your best to plot any city with a missing child within the circle?”

“Certainly.” A blue line arcs around the country, and Pepper considers it. There are only a few cities not located within that circle, she thinks, and studying Seattle and Syracuse, she revises her original idea.

“Don’t use straight distance as your measurement,” she instructs. “Use – I don’t know, estimated travel time on major highways, something like that instead.”

“Recalculating,” JARVIS announces, and the whole screen dims down. Then it lights back up. “Well done, Miss Potts.”

The blue circle is now no longer a circle: instead, it’s a winding line around an area shaded blue. All the cities lit by missing children are overlaid in blue, and at the center of the blue area is a single city glowing red.

“Does that match any of the predictions?” Pepper asks, holding on to her desk to contain her excitement.

“Indeed it does. Would you like me to relay this information to the others, madam?”

“Yes,” Pepper says, and then she reaches for her phone.

Tony is first on her list, of course, but he’s in the air and for once he’s turned off his phone. She leaves a message for him, telling him to check his email, and then leaves the same message for Bruce.

She calls Natasha next, because Pepper's just a bit more comfortable with Natasha than Clint. Even though Natasha is not Natalie, Pepper had liked Natalie, and it makes liking Natasha a little easier.

“Hi Pepper,” Natasha answers after two rings. There’s background noise, the rushing sound of wind that indicates car travel.

“Hi,” Pepper says, and then immediately asks, “Where are you?”

There’s a brief pause, and she can hear Natasha repeating the question to Clint and the man’s lower voice responding. “South Dakota,” she says. “Eastern South Dakota. There’s another fork ahead of us in Sioux Falls, so we’re planning on stopping there for the night.”

Pepper scrambles to bring up her map, tracking where they are, and then breathes a sigh of relief. “Don’t,” she says, and explains what she’s found.

Natasha’s voice goes from being a little weary, a little bored, to full alert. “Got it,” she says, and she’s already relaying instructions to Clint, who Pepper assumes is driving. “Thanks, Pepper. We’ll give you a call when we’re closer.”

“I’ll set up a hotel for you,” she promises, and they disconnect. 

Steve is next, and he’s harder, because Thor and Jane are there with him, and Pepper doesn’t know how much of this information should leak its way out to Jane and her family. Still, Pepper manages to pass on the information well enough, but at the very end Steve hands the phone to Jane.

“I won’t tell anyone if I’m not supposed to,” the scientist starts off, “but please, Ms. Potts – Pepper- can you tell me where they’re going?”

Thor will know soon enough anyway, Pepper rationalizes, and she weighs need-to-know with how she would feel if it were her niece gone missing. 

Still, she only gives the state, not the city – this whole thing has gone on to Fury, she knows, and it is a SHIELD operation now. Pepper has fairly high clearance – Phil, bless his heart, had seen to that – but she’s not sure what Jane’s is, and not sure what she’s allowed to say.

Still, the little she gives seems to be enough. Jane takes a deep breath. “Right,” she says, and then, “Thank you. Thank you so much. I don’t know how you figured that out.”

“I had help,” Pepper says, thinking of JARVIS and wondering – not for the first time – how on earth to reward a computer program. 

“Still,” and Jane’s voice is steady, “I’m grateful.” She takes a breath. “I’m going to stay here with my brother,” she says, “but Thor and Captain – Steve – are going to go down to L.A., I think, for a day or so to pick up some things Tony wants them to have. Let me give you my number.”

So Pepper writes down her cell phone number, though she already knows it, and promises to stay in touch, and when she sets down her cell phone she sits back down into her desk chair and considers the map still floating over her head.

Thirty babies gone missing, and she counts them all again. Thirty children stolen away from their families, and six Avengers out to find and save them, years after they were lost.

She’s betting on the Avengers, because it’s her job to remember things, and she remembers the instant teamwork and support they summoned to get Jane safely to Seattle. This isn’t just a mission for them. Thor and Jane connect them, of course, but Pepper wonders if any of them realize just how close to home this particular assignment is for each of them. She’s fairly certain that they would have claimed the mission as theirs even without Jane to connect them personally to the Fosters: this goes against what they believe in, on levels Pepper can only imagine.

All of them value childhood, the innocence of being young and happy. She hasn’t actually read their dossiers, of course; she doesn’t have that kind of clearance, and she has too many scruples to dig through Tony’s hacked files to find them. But they’ve lived in the Tower for the better part of a year, and Pepper’s observant, and it’s her job to remember things so that Tony doesn’t have to.

So she remembers that Steve’s tales of growing up in Brooklyn can’t quite whitewash the fact that he grew up poor, sick, and unwanted. She remembers Bruce sympathizing with Tony about absent, unaffectionate fathers, and has her own suspicions about why Bruce doesn’t drink. Pepper remembers how Clint’s single personal belonging on his nightstand is a faded and torn picture of a young woman and two boys, but the children are so small and so identical it’s hard to determine which toddler is Clint. She remembers a random, late-night conversation with Natasha that left her shaken and oddly overprotective of the younger woman, wondering just what Russian orphanages were like. Thor speaks of his upbringing openly and often, but he knows all too well what being cut off from that happiness felt like, and he is quietly, in his own way, still reeling from that discovery. And Tony is of course the easiest. She doesn’t need to remember to know the issues there: the hard to please father, the beloved but absent mother, the childhood spent yearning for approval and affection.

Pepper considers the group as a whole now, and remembers the hints of hard childhoods, the feeling she sometimes has of children who had to grow up too quickly, who never had the chance to retain their innocence, and realizes just why the Avengers claimed this particular assignment. 

Stealing children from families does more than anger them: it _offends_ them, in a way that global invasion or otherworldly magic doesn’t. 

She’d bet most of them wouldn’t classify their childhoods or their families as particularly happy; she’d go so far, Pepper thinks, to say that at least a few of them probably didn’t have much of a chance to be a child, free of responsibility and worries. It offends them that someone is doing this deliberately.

And that, Pepper thinks, leaning back in her chair contemplatively, means they’re going to dive into this head-first and heart-first, without regard for the consequences. 

She’s good at remembering things, after all, and they’ve put themselves into missions this completely before. She knows what this will mean for the team: long hours, little sleep, endless arguments, and eventual teamwork. Little details will fall by the wayside – necessities like grocery shopping and running Stark Industries and keeping New York safe from whatever minor monster of the month threatens from a previously unknown dimension. But Pepper’s dealt with this before – not stolen children, of course, thank God; but she’s dealt with Avengers so dedicated to taking on problem that they inadvertently create minor crises in their wake. And it’s Pepper’s job to remember, so now she sits back and does.

She knows who will forget to eat, and who will stop taking pain pills for headaches. She knows what food to stock the fridge with, that Bruce prefers Indian for take-out but Chinese for eating in, and that Tony needs to have some kind of snack in the work room or he’ll wind up buying an orchard in California because he’s craving oranges. Too, thinking on it, she remembers the shape of the house in California, and frowns; there’s a few things she’ll have to send out west, and if they’re staying in Seattle, Steve will need a gym membership and Thor will want jogging shoes… Someone will have to change the codes on Natasha’s locker, and she’s fairly sure a few meetings at SHIELD will have to be canceled.

Pepper sighs, but she’s smiling. She is good at remembering things, and now she puts that skill to work.

“JARVIS,” she says aloud, “we have some work to do.”


	9. Section Two: Steve

# -Steve-

He doesn’t like Los Angeles.

He’s adapting just fine to the rest of the modern world – to computers in place of typewriters and phones that can be carried in pockets and do so many different tasks it’s hard for him to remember to call them phones. He’s used to women wearing pants and men styling their hair oddly, to cars that are both bigger and smaller than he prefers, to the outlandish prices for everything from gas to groceries.

He’s even getting used to the music, slowly, and if that isn’t a sign he’s adapting, he’ll move out of the Tower.

Still, Los Angeles feels too new for Steve to like it. Oh, it’s not a brand-new city, he knows: L.A. was L.A. even in the forties. But there’s an air of desperation hanging over the city with the haze that permeates the valley, and it wasn’t there in the forties. It makes Steve uneasy. He watches the city spread out beneath him as the plane lines up for landing, and can’t help but feel dwarfed by the vast expanse of city spread out beneath him.

New York is even more crowded, he knows; New York is the Big Apple, Gotham itself, and by rights New York should feel dirtier to him, older and cramped and cruel. Steve saw enough of New York’s dark alleyways and ramshackable tenements in his youth to know that the city so many dream of can be cold and impersonal, and by rights, he should hate New York for that.

But Steve likes New York. He liked it in the poverty of the thirties and the grim war-time of the forties, and now he’s learned to like it again in the chaos of the… oughts? Zeros? Tens? No one’s really too sure what to call the past decade or so, and the uncertainly makes Steve feel a bit more comfortable with the modern world, a bit less out of place. He might not have all the answers, but neither does anyone else, and so the confusion of what the previous decade was called sits happily in Steve’s mind as proof that for all the advancement, for all the years gone by, the future is much like the past – and there are no good names for what to call the 2000s. It amuses him.

Still, L.A. makes him uneasy. New York at least tries to rise above itself, with skyscrapers and monuments and a stunning tribute to freedom towering higher by the day. New York reaches for the sky even as it grounds itself in the green earth of Central Park.

Los Angeles has no such aspirations, in Steve’s mind. From the air, it’s a sprawling, tangled mess of neighborhoods and annexed towns, with freeways choked by traffic and a lingering miasma of pollution hovering in the air. New York spreads up, ever higher in tall skyscrapers and office buildings; L.A. has its downtown, of course, but otherwise spreads out, horizontal instead of vertical, until the growth of stucco homes and suburban shopping malls reaches out to the edges of the earth.

It unnerves Steve, and he knows it’s because he’s an East Coast boy. He’s used to being confined to the island, used to vertical space being a necessity, and the sprawl is simply mind-boggling. Too, the city itself is colored differently: New York is grey, stone and glass and steel, with the green trees of Central Park dabbed like a paint drop into the center. Los Angeles is brown and tan, a desert town for all it is by the beach, and what little plants grow here are drab and dry, dull sage greens and brittle yellowing grasses, and to a man who notices color, the difference is almost painful.

So Steve goes from the plane to the car without looking too much at the land around him. Tony, of course, would never deign to live amid such crowded, burned out splendor. Steve leans back in the car’s rear seat and doesn’t look out the window as the driver takes them away from the airport, into the choked city streets and the freeways even more starved for space between cars.

Thor, of course, is fascinated. He’s been to Tony’s Malibu home only once before, and he sits with his face practically pressed up against the tinted glass window. But he sits in silence, and rarely even asks Steve a question. His is a thinking man’s curiosity, an observer’s mind instead of the child’s vocal “why”, and instead he stares out of the window as the car laboriously battles its way through crowded, angry streets towards Tony’s home.

Only once they are beyond much of the city does Thor finally venture to speak. “The city,” he says, “it stretches for miles. And yet New York is contained on an island.”

Steve considers the history drilled into his head in school, the New York pride in their tiny island culture, the widespread manifest destiny of the west, and merely shrugs. “West coast cities tended to have more room to grow,” is his best attempt at explaining everything, and the discussion on why lasts the final forty minutes to Tony’s house and only ends when Steve promises to send Thor a few good books on westward expansion, the California Gold Rush, and, tangentially related, the San Francisco earthquake.

Tony’s home above the sprawl of L.A.’s streets is fantastic – something out the movies, Steve always thinks a bit whimsically, with balconies and angles and a huge garage and windows from floor to ceiling. He’s been here before, but not often, and he knows Tony keeps a very small staff here now that he’s moved more or less full-time to New York.

So instead of calling for a housekeeper, Steve lets himself in with his own key. The caretakers know they’re here, of course – Pepper, that saint of organization and forethought, had called ahead.

Thor finds the table set in the expansive dining room just off the main entrance. “There is a note here as well,” he adds, and Steve stops pondering the expansive view of L.A. from Tony’s living room to come over and investigate.

The note is brief: the caretakers have dinner planned for an hour from now, and they have, at Miss Potts’ request, unlocked the lower level for their use and would they be so kind as to clean up after themselves while down there.

Steve can’t help but laugh. “Tony probably won’t let them downstairs,” he tells Thor, who grins, and together they make their way down modern-looking metal stairs to Tony’s laboratory.

The whole lab is sleek and metallic, in the clean, sweeping style Tony prefers. Thor stares at the cars with appreciation – he is determined to earn his driver’s license, though Steve is willing to bet even if that day comes there is no way Tony is letting him behind the wheel of any of these beauties.

“Not what we’re here for, Thor,” he says after a few moments. 

Thor is bent in rapt appreciation over a car that cost roughly half a million dollars. “Look at her _lines_ ,” he enthuses to Steve, and runs a reverent hand over the red hood. “With a conveyance as this, surely Tony wishes to come back to drive her.”

“Probably,” Steve agrees, and squints: he doesn’t know enough about modern cars to identify it as anything beyond red and expensive. “I bet if you ask nicely enough, he’ll take you out for a spin.”

Thor beams. “I will offer him a ride upon my best warhorse in Asgard,” he announces. “Surely the trade will appeal to him.”

“Surely,” Steve agrees drily, and moves over to the computer station. “JARVIS, are you online?” he asks, a little hesitantly.

“I am fully running, thank you, Captain Rogers,” the smooth computer tones answered him. “Mr. Stark has fully integrated my systems with the Tower in New York and is able to monitor your progress.”

“Right,” Tony’s voice suddenly announces, and lights flash from the desk and a miniature Tony appears on the computer screen, nearly 3-D. He glares at Thor. “So hands off the car, big guy, or no date night for you next time I’m in town. You’ve got good taste, though, she’s a sweetheart of a ride.”

Before they can get sidetracked, and too used to Tony butting in to be perturbed by the fact that he’s now a digital display, Steve asks him, “So what do we need to do from here? I want to get back to Seattle as fast as possible.”

“Right, down to work,” Tony’s hologram says, and rubs his hands. “I’ve got a limited camera set up over here, so I might have to ask you two to hunt for something around the workshop. But just to give you an update – Bruce is running adoption agencies, and I’m working with SHEILD to get a plausible cover for our two super spies up and running.”

“Good,” Thor says, and comes around the desk so that he can talk to Tony’s face. “Richard and Andrea are still cooperating with the police, but Jane says that knowing we are also working for them is a help.”

Steve shakes his head. “The police aren’t going to get anywhere on this unless we tell them where to look,” he points out. “The detective, he’s a good guy, but he never made the leap to look into the empty house, and that grief counselor, he’s… Well.” And he glances at Thor, can’t keep the smile from creeping out. “She’s your sister-in-law – sort of. Connection. You want to tell Tony?”

“What? Tell me what?”

“Andrea,” Thor explains, with no little satisfaction, “kicked him out of her house.”

“Really!” Tony says, and laughs. “Bruce! Did you hear that?”

Bruce doesn’t appear in the camera’s field of vision, but his dry voice is easily recognizable. “I hope he deserved it.”

Steve’s jaw firms. “He did,” is all he says, but even through the grainy distortion of the camera, Tony’s projected eyes harden.

“Well, well, good for her,” is all he says, and then switches over to business. “So you’ll want to get back to Seattle ASAP,” he continues. “How about we get started? First of all, JARVIS, pop open my desk for them, will you? There’s a laptop in there you’ll want. How do you feel about tablets? Oh, and you’re going to need to do some digging in the upstairs closet.”

Steve glances at Thor, who tilts his head and offers a small, wry smile, as if to say, “It’s Tony; what did you expect?” Then both get to work.

It takes close to twenty minutes to root through the mess Tony left behind in California, but with his long-distance direction and a great deal of advice from JARVIS, they have a sizeable pile on the desk in front of them.

“So what do we do with all this… stuff?” Steve asks, staring at the collection of technology in front of them.

“Well, first off, you’re going to need to configure the laptop there in the lab before you leave,” Tony says almost absently. “I’ll set up the tablets here and ship them to Seattle, that’ll be faster in the long run. Bruce, walk them through the sync, will you?”

So Bruce, who is far more patient, pops onto the screen and walks them through how to set up and connect the laptop to JARVIS’s network. 

“In retrospect,” Bruce says wryly, polishing his glasses, “sending you two to deal with this on your own was not our smartest move.”

Steve looks up from the computer. “What, the World War Two relic and the Asgardian god with a big hammer aren’t the best people to be in charge of setting up technology? Wherever did you get that idea?”

Bruce just chuckles. “Well, maybe… JARVIS should be able to access the systems once the file finishes loading up. Just let me know once it’s done.”

The screen pings. “It’s done,” Steve says, and the laptop’s display flickers.

“Good.” Bruce is tapping away at the screen; somewhere behind him, Steve can hear Tony issuing the same instructions, given far faster. “All right, you’ll see things moving on your screen here in just a second – don’t worry, that’s just a remote access…”

Steve watches, more fascinated than he’s willing to admit, as the little arrow on the screen moves seemingly of its own accord, as windows pop open and commands are entered in. He’d signed up for computer classes back in New York, taken at night at a community college and mainly populated by hard-working individuals with little English skills or octogenarians with the same struggle with new technology as Steve himself. So he can get by with computers, likes the ease and simplicity of the machine, and isn’t as far behind as Tony no doubt suspects. Still, he’s grateful for Bruce’s guidance, especially as the laptop’s screen dims, and then the display in front of him lights up in a flashing dance of colors.

“Give it a minute to triangulate,” Bruce says. “Almost done.”

Thor, meanwhile, has been following JARVIS’s instructions on the opposite side of the lab; he finally looks up from a long panel of control switches to announce, “Done!” just as all the lights dim and a veritable carpet of light motes spins out from a small projector in the ceiling.

The dots of light sweep down from the ceiling, splinter and attach randomly, and then fade into static blurs and indistinct shapes around the lab.

“How’s it look?” Tony asks.

Steve and Thor share a perplexed glance. “Fuzzy,” Thor says at last.

Tony swears a bit, and the shapes shift, and then, like a camera coming into focus, sharpen into distinct forms.

“Good,” Steve says swiftly, and the focus stays. “Perfect.” And, because he really can’t help himself, “Wow.”

“Yeah, wow,” Tony says a bit smugly. “I like this one.”

A life-size projected image of Tony – sharper and far more defined than the miniature that had appeared on the desk screen – stands behind a counter made of light. To his left, Bruce is shifting his weight back and forth, glancing between screens. More surprisingly, a separate, second group of projections stands across from them: Natasha and Clint look like they’re sitting on the edge of a big bed, with Natasha occasionally reaching forward to adjust the angle of the camera.

“Impressive,” Thor admits, turning in place to study his comrades. “Very impressive. I did not think bi-location was possible for mortals.”

“Not quite bi-location,” Tony is quick to point out. “Just cameras and some good lighting. How’s it look on your end, Natasha?”

She gives a little shrug. “It’s a video conference set-up,” she says, and she doesn’t sound surprised or awed. “We don’t have the whole theater effect you guys must be getting.”

Tony pokes at the air beside him. “Yeah? Well, you’re sitting right here in my office, Red, so guess what I’m touching?”

Natasha rolls her eyes, and beside her, Clint laughs. “Can we get back to business now that we’re all set up?”

“Right,” Bruce answers almost immediately – Steve has the feeling he’s trying to shut Tony down before he really gets started. “I’m narrowing the field down, but here, just had a lucky break with the Joneses.” The laptop in front of Steve starts opening and closing more windows. “Avery and Kitty Jones didn’t book a hotel once they arrived in town, which means that they’ve likely got a place to stay of their own, or they’re staying with friends. So I did a few more searches and came up with a hit – they’ve got a house in Omaha. I’ll send you the location,” he adds to Clint and Natasha. 

“But,” Tony chimes in, “I ran their name through memberships in town to see if they were registered with an adoption agency or anything like that, and guess what? They’re not quite that dumb, but they’re not as smart as they think. They’ve got local bank records, so I might find them on a payroll direct deposit list somewhere. But – and here’s the catch – there’s a country club they belong to, and Avery Jones has a full-time golf card with them _and_ membership in a motorcycle club that occasionally meets there. Kitty Jones belongs to a health club out of the country club, and has herself a standing appointment once a week.”

“That’s like a gym?” Steve asks. “Why does she need an appointment?”

“Like a gym for girly girls,” Natasha explains briefly. “Spas and mud baths and things like that alongside treadmills, and people to do your nails in case you chip them during strength training.”

Steve tries to imagine a gym like that, and fails. “If you say so,” he says instead. “So why is this news, Tony?”

“Because,” Tony says, and flashes that billion-dollar grin that he’s practically trademarked. “Of all the adoption agencies in town, there just so happens to be only one run by a couple with the exact same memberships.”

“Names,” Clint demands. 

“Aaron and Shelly Field,” Bruce announces. “Their agency is called Discreet Choices.”

Thor is carefully writing the information out in his neat, almost calligraphic handwriting. “Are they online at all?” Steve asks, and remembers the right terminology. “Can we google them?”

“Oh yes,” Tony assures him gleefully. “There’s tons of information out there for us to go through. We’ve just started combing through it, but there will be enough to hang them with if this goes through all the way.”

“You can send us all this?” Natasha asks, and glances at Clint. “We’ll need to get it to SHIELD, and get all our stories set up if we’re going to move in on this.”

“As soon as we can,” Bruce promises. “Just get us a list of what you’ll need.”

“Membership in that country club, for one,” Natasha murmurs, and then shakes her head. “I’ll start work on it.”

“How fast can you two be ready to go after them?” Steve asks. “Are we talking days here, or weeks?”

“Days,” Clint tells him decisively. “Weeks would be better, but days will work. I’ll get in touch with Hill.”

“I can help,” Tony adds. “Pepper says Stark Industries has some warehouses and factories out there; I’ll see what I can do to help arrange things for you.”

“Good.” And both Clint and Natasha lean back a bit, obviously set.

“What are the next steps?” Steve finds himself asking. “Tony, you and Bruce are going to keep digging?”

“Yeah, and we’ll make sure we get our super spies into place,” he replies absently. “I want to find a payroll – insurance, medical care, things like that – on the Joneses, and Bruce is looking into who did the paperwork for Discreet Choices on the adoptions, see if we can’t tie in more people.”

“Good,” Steve says, and looks at Thor. “So what can we do, out here?”

There’s a pause, and then Bruce squints at them. “Well,” he begins slowly, “the Fosters. We can’t tell them too much, and can’t have them stopping the search for Maddie just yet even though we’ve got some good leads. Thor, that’s mostly on you, to stick around and provide support for them.”

Thor nods, solid and strong and determined. “I can do this,” he says, and then adds, urgently, “But what can I do to help the _team_?”

There is a long pause, and Natasha is the one who breaks it. “Let me give you a call later on,” she says, sounding speculative. “I think I might have an idea.”

Thor gives her projected form a close look, but her face, unsurprisingly, is inscrutable. “Yes,” he says after a moment. “I look forward to it.”

“Well, then,” Steve says into the silence that follows. “What do you want me to do, now that we’ve got all this technology?” And he waves a hand at the laptop and all assorted drives and gadgets Tony had instructed him to collect.

Bruce and Tony share a look. “The reports to Hill, for one,” Tony blurts out quickly, before Bruce can stop him. 

“Tony!” Natasha chides, reproachfully, but she’s smiling.

Steve’s lips twitch upward, too, but he is like Thor, and needs to be doing something. “Really,” he insists. “What should I be doing? We’ve got you two on the ground in Omaha –“ and he waves his hands towards Clint and Natasha “-and you two running information in New York. What can I do from Seattle?”

“Three things, I think,” Bruce says slowly, and he takes off his glasses. “Firstly, much as I hate to admit it, Tony’s right.”

“Thank you, thank you.”

“You do the best reports of all of us,” the scientist offers with a small smile, “but you’re also best at condensing the data down, and finding things we miss in that. So the reports are yours.”

That’s easier to take than Tony’s flippant passing of a job no one wants. “All right,” Steve allows. “What else?”

“The receipts you found,” Bruce continues. “Specially, the one for the stroller and all the infant gear? Look into that. Thor’s too recognizable, and maybe we’ll get lucky and get some store security camera footage, or a clerk that remembers them really well. We’ll need that evidence to tie them up in court if it comes down to that.”

It’s a good point; Steve nods. “You said three things,” he reminds the older man.

“Right.” And Bruce winces, puts his glasses back on. “We need someone with a good eye for the age-progression images. It’s going to be tedious, but we’ll need someone to sort through pictures and try to make matches, and you’re the best for the job.”

Steve thinks of his small art notebooks and character studies, and then of the flickering photographs of missing children. “Good,” he says. “I’ll start once I have the files.”

“We’ll send them over tonight,” Tony says. “Any other questions?”

There’s a general pause, and then Clint asks, “Next check-in?”

“Once there’s more to report,” Steve commands, thinking of the tasks set before each of them, and the limited time they have to work. “We’ll head back to Seattle tonight, if we can still use the jet.”

This last is directed at Tony, half a question; the billionaire waves a hand suddenly holding a drink carelessly. “What’s mine is yours, and so forth and so on,” he says, and then turns to point at Thor. “But no touching the cars.”

Thor looks disappointed but resigned. “Yet,” he says, and Tony winces but doesn’t disagree.

“Great,” Steve says, and they all sign off rather brusquely. It takes Bruce to talk Steve through the technology required to stop the program, but once the lights are back to normal and there are no longer phantasmal holograms of his teammates wandering around the lab, Steve looks over at Thor.

“Bruce says it will take about an hour to download all the files for the photo progressions,” he says. “Dinner?”

Thor, though, is reverently examining yet another car, this one in screaming yellow and with only two seats. He waves a hand. “I will eat with Jane in Seattle,” he says, and then asks, “How fast do you think this one will go?”

“Very,” Steve says, and shaking his head, goes back upstairs. The housekeepers have laid out dinner for two at the table, and so he sits by himself and does his best to demolish the meals – his metabolism is more than up to the task of two elegantly-prepared dinners. 

They’re making a start, Steve thinks as he finishes up. It’s dark now, and from the table he can see the lights of L.A. coming to life. From here, he can see the city sprawled out beneath him, but now it’s not a dusty city choked with itself. Now’s it’s beautiful, spread out like a glowing golden blanket of stars, with rivers of silver roads and bright pinpricks of stars illuminating major buildings.

Steve lets out a slow, even breath. The sea is pounding just west of him, the water deep and dark compared to the lights of L.A., and the contrast is soothing in the darkness in a way it had been glaringly painful in the light.

They’re making progress, he reminds himself, and turns to stand and look east over the lights of Los Angeles. He can’t see across the country, but Omaha is east, and tonight, at least, there’s a baby girl sleeping there that shouldn’t be.

He liked Omaha, he remembers almost absently, and lets his gaze linger on the bright lights of L.A., the way headlights flow past on the highways like neon water down a concrete stream. His fingers itch, just that second, for his sketchpad, and Steve shakes his head a bit self-depreciatingly: he likes L.A. more than he thinks he does, he supposes.

Thor comes up the stairs with a pile of electronics. “The files are nearly done transferring,” he informs Steve. “Do we need anything else before we leave?”

Steve pulls himself away from the window and the view. “No,” he says. “I don’t think so.”

“Good.” Thor sets the gear down on the table, looks out across the city nightscape. “So many people.”

Steve glances back out the window, and sees the city as Thor must: filled with weak, puny creatures, scrabbling their day to day existences in a harsh and unforgiving world and yet still waking up, day after day, to continue going forward.

L.A., with all its roughness and problems, is suddenly beautifully hopeful as it shines in the night. It’s a city he doesn’t even particularly like, but it’s the people in it who are suddenly real to Steve, in a way they weren’t when he saw the streets in the day: people who live and struggle and laugh in rooms across the city. 

It is the people he likes, no matter where they live: the people around the world who are doing their best to just live their lives as their own. It’s what keeps Steve fighting, both before when the whole world had been at war and now that he’s awoken in a whole new world. It’s the people that matter, in all their differences and opinions, and it’s the people that occasionally need Captain America to keep them safe enough to live those unique lives.

Steve will fight as long as he’s needed, and this may be a war small and personal, but he’s still needed.

“Yes,” Steve says, and comes to stand by his friend and look down at the glowing lights. “Let’s get to work so no more children go missing.”


	10. Section Two: Thor

# -Thor-

Pepper sends him running shoes.

A bellman brings the package up to his room when he returns, weary and alone, after meeting with Jane and her family. It takes his tired mind a moment to process the brown box and the clear tape, but his name is obviously written on the center of the cardboard and Pepper’s is in the upper left corner - the return address; Jane had taught him this when they’d been in Arizona. 

So he rips the tape up off the box, and opens the box rather carelessly, accidentally tearing half of a flap off because cardboard is always so much more flimsy than he remembers. The shoes are nestled in their own box inside the outer container, with another, larger package lying beside them. There’s a note, too, in Pepper’s handwriting: _Take care of yourself,_ she says, _and take your phone when you go out._

There are running shoes, the same as the ones he keeps in the Tower, and the soft pants called sweats and a package of plain cotton shirts, and two more outfits that Thor recognize as what a mortal man of his size and stature might wear. She’s even tucked in socks into the corner of the box.

Thor sets the small card on his bedside table, and feeling both cheered and a little less tired, changes into the sweats and one of the plain shirts. He’s lacing his shoes on when there’s a knock on his bedroom door.

“Come in,” he declares, and Steve lets himself in. He, too, is dressed for exertion, and he smiles when he sees the empty box on Thor’s bed.

“Pepper sent you a care package, too?” he asks.

“Indeed,” Thor agrees. “I thought to explore the city by foot – would you wish to join me?”

They occasionally run together in New York, when the weather is good and they can manage to be two anonymous joggers in the park. It’s easier to manage on SHIELD property, of course – they’re less anonymous, but far less bothered by questions. Thor likes to run, especially here on Midgard where he sometimes grows annoyed with the lack of action open to him in his day to day life, and Steve has proven to be one of the few who has the stamina to keep up with him.

“Sure,” Steve says, and a few minutes later, phone carefully tucked into his pocket, Thor strikes out from the hotel.

The city sprawls out in front of him. The taller buildings are to the southwest, clustered closer to the water. Thor instead turns his steps north, to quieter streets, and vaguely oriented towards where the Foster’s home is miles away from them, he starts to run.

Steve runs beside him. It’s nearly midnight, but there are still people out on the streets – together they dodge around other pedestrians and wait their turn for crosswalks to flicker in their favor. They run until they reach a vast expanse of water, and only then does Thor slow his steps and stop. It’s not a beach – there are parking lots and buildings and trails built up around it, and he can’t see any waves. Off in the distance to the right of him is a great bridge, carrying cars and trucks high over the waterway, and Thor remembers crossing over on it and realizes that it must be the highway.

Steve pauses beside him, and the two men walk together to the water’s edge, where a dock reaches out into the water with half a dozen small boats tied up alongside it. The water is dark and quiet, lapping up against the wooden slats of the tiny jetty, and Thor shuts his eyes to breathe in the smell of water and night rather than city and stress. 

Only then does Steve speak. “How are the Fosters doing with the news?” he asks.

Thor winces, and lowers himself to sit on the dock. “Well enough,” he says. “I think telling them was right. Mrs. Foster worries less about her daughter’s health, at least.” 

“That’s something, I suppose,” Steve sighs. He is silent for a long moment, and Thor squints up at the dark sky, at the stars he can barely glimpse through the fleeting cloud cover. _Home_ is somewhere out there, home and family and all that is familiar, and the stars are comforting to him because even though they spin in patterns he is still learning rather than Asgard’s familiar constellations, the light is the same.

Then Steve speaks again. “I can’t imagine it,” he says, and his voice is tight and angry. 

Thor has grown used to the way his comrades’ voices change when their emotions grow strong: Dr. Banner’s speech slows, stretches out as he wills his emotion into calm; Clint grows terse and quiet, precise and somehow harder; Tony babbles, fierce and fast and frantic; Natasha speaks carefully, perfectly, words sharp and frosted with ice.

Steve always sounds as though his throat is closing in on him, as though he forces the words past his lips unwillingly, as though his mouth is at war with his body. He speaks with control, though, and for that Thor admires him: Thor knows that he cannot control his words as well, especially when anger heats his blood, and it is Steve’s cool head that Thor seeks to emulate. 

“Why would anyone do this?” Steve continues, frustrated. “There are plenty of kids in bad situations who need good parents to adopt them – why steal a kid from parents who love her? Why break up a family when there are good kids with no parents out there who could be adopted instead?”

Thor has researched American adoption, and is still a little shaky on the concept. There is adoption on Asgard, of course: orphans raised to honor their missing parents, placed within families that will nurture and love them as their own out of bonds of friendship and duty to those missing mothers and fathers. Too, there are the children of war, orphans with no one to claim them and no family left to see to their care, adopted by childless widows and soldiers with no sons to carry on their name.

There is at least one other child of war, his mind reminds him, raised without mention of his birth family, raised with all the honor and privilege being Odin’s son could provide. 

“I don’t know,” Thor answers at last, still looking up at the unfamiliar shapes of the stars. “Pride, I would suppose.”

“Pride?”

He considers. “Do some not,” he asked, “think themselves better than others here?”

Steve almost sounds amused. “Of course,” he says, and the amusement is bitter. “Always.”

“What do they think makes them better?”

At that Steve laughs, a short bark of a laugh that has more to do with derision than mirth. “Anything,” he says. “Race, religion, nationality, home town, money, family…”

“Family,” Thor seizes upon. “So would some not consider certain children without a family to be…” Thor hesitates, not liking the word. “Lesser?” He pushes on. “As if by not having a parent to claim them, they were not worthy of being claimed? So that they would be rejected in favor of a child loved and wanted?”

“As if something were wrong with them for being orphaned, so they steal a baby from a perfectly good family because she obviously _deserves_ a perfectly good family?” Steve sounds equal parts incredulous and disgusted. “I don’t like how that sounds, which probably means you’re right. It’s awful. Someone probably believes that.”

Thor doesn’t disagree. 

“At least Maddie will be taken care of,” Steve says on another sigh. “I was worried. You know?” And he looks at Thor, face shadowed in the darkness. “People can be monsters to kids sometimes. If they’re stronger and the kid’s too little to fight back. I was worried.”

“We all were,” Thor says simply. He hesitates, unsure, and then quietly admits, “I do not like to think of the family adopting her, of the families who have adopted the other missing children.”

“Why not?”

He searches for the right words, and then decides the truth is the easiest response. “My brother is adopted,” he says, though Steve already knows this, “and still we were brothers. If, some years after we had come to be family, a stranger appeared and claimed he was not my brother at all and in truth belonged to other parents, would it simply erase the years of kinship between us?” He lifted his hands helplessly. “I think of parents told they must give back a child they have come to love, of siblings rent apart in the name of returning a child to their blood kin, and I think that in the end, there will be two families hurt by uncovering this deception rather than merely the one the child was originally stolen from.”

“Yes,” Steve agrees grimly. “Blood might be thicker than water, but it’s not the only thing that makes a family.”

Thor is the eldest son of his parents, and sometimes – when he is lonely, when he is uncertain, when he misses home and family – he thinks that Steve would make an excellent older brother. Steve’s young, Thor knows – maybe younger than Natasha if one doesn’t count all the years frozen; Thor’s not sure on that one – but he doesn’t see Steve as a younger brother. He’s too patient, too understanding, and too used to knowing that his orders will be obeyed for Thor to see him as anything but an older brother.

Thor looks up to him, and won’t tell Steve that he considers him a kind of role model and mentor here on Midgard. 

So he simply nods. “Yes.” And Thor looks up at the sky, towards home, and nearly shivers. “Family can be chosen.” _And rejected,_ he thinks sadly, but does not say that aloud.

They stand in silence for a long minute, and then Steve shakes his head angrily. “The whole thing stinks,” he says plainly, in as close to an outburst as the carefully diplomatic Captain America comes. “Kids should grow up safe and loved, parents shouldn’t have to worry about their kids, and anyone who makes it otherwise shouldn’t be allowed near enough anyone to do a damn thing about it.”

Thor smiles. “On this we are agreed,” he says, and offers his hand to the man he would be proud to call brother. Steve takes it and shakes it, as though to seal a deal, and in that instant, Thor’s phone rings.

“You go ahead,” Steve says, and he’s smiling now, satisfied that they’ve decided how the world should be. “I’ll run on back and see if I can’t install that photo recognition program.”

So Thor waves Steve away as he carefully pulls out his phone, and unlocks the call with fingers far thicker than the flimsy device was designed to support. Natasha’s picture – blurry, sideways, and badly-lit, but taken Thor’s first day with the phone – fills the screen, and so he taps the connect button.

“Greetings,” he offers, because sometimes _hello_ seems too odd to him to use, informal and made up and foreign.

“It’s Natasha,” she says back, and he likes that with him, she never says _hi_ or _hey_ or any of the hundreds of informal openings others use. She’s precise and polite and somehow very respectful; he is a prince of Asgard, not of Midgard, but he feels as though she goes out of her way to treat him kindly, and appreciates it. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

Thor looks up at the stars above him again, and then over towards the great bridge carrying the freeway over dark water. “Yes,” he says, suddenly eager to speak with her. “You said you have a plan for what I can do to help.”

“An idea,” she corrects, and he can nearly hear the worry in her voice. “And it’s not really as… active as you usually are.”

He can’t quite help his wry smile. “I think I will survive somehow,” he tells her, and is rewarded to hear her laugh – briefly, shortly, but still laughter.

“All right,” she says, and he pictures her sitting on a bed in a hotel, miles to the east, looking out a darkened window over an unfamiliar city where a little girl sleeps in an unfamiliar bed. “If you’re up to it, someone needs to deal with the media.”

Tony cringes every time the word _media_ is spoken in his presence. Thor, however, contemplates the bridge across the water from him in shock. He considers several options of responses, and finally goes with what he’s been told the most often. “It isn’t wise for me to talk to reporters,” he says, bewildered.

This repetition of Bruce’s kindly meant, and often offered, advice, gains him another of Natasha’s laughs. “Usually,” she agrees. “But I think if you go in to this with a bit more, ah, planning than usual, you could be very valuable.”

“Explain,” Thor demands, and paces back and forth on the rickety dock.

“Words can be weapons,” Natasha says simply. “I want you to use them.”

He blows out a breath and stops in his tracks. “Words have never been my skill of choice,” he tells her. “My brother was always –” And he stops, because mentioning Loki to the group is always dangerous, a tense topic even under the best situations.

But Natasha doesn’t flinch. “Your brother,” she says, “talked a lot.” He can’t tell if her tone has cooled.

But her statement is so pragmatic, so true, that he can’t help but smile faintly. “Yes. Enough for both of us, my mother always said.”

“Then for this,” she continues, “see if you can’t learn a bit from him.” Now her voice changes, becomes brisk, businesslike. “Words can be weapons,” she repeats, “and the media is very good at spreading those words for us. Every word you use in front of them, every phrase, even every action, says something, sometimes more than just the actual words you say. With just a bit of coaching, you’d be able to control the media there in Seattle, and that will take the pressure off of the Fosters, off of the rest of us, and keep our prey from getting nervous.”

It takes him a minute to digest this, and then: “Explain,” he asks, but he’s curious.

She hums for a quick second, a noise he knows means she’s thinking. “If I were standing with you,” she says at last, “and there’s a single piece of Pepper’s chocolate fudge left, and I cross my arms and put my chin out and tell you,” and here her voice changes, becomes defiant and challenging, “ _you can have the last piece if you want it,_ do I want you to have it?”

He smiles, because she sounded like Tony. “No.”

“And if I put my hands behind my back and look down at the floor and say,” and her voice changes again, goes sad and longing, “ _you can have the last piece if you want it,_ do I want you to have it?”

He blinks, starts pacing again. “No.”

“And if I say, _you can have the last piece if you want it_?” she repeats again, sounding bored and careless. 

He smiles. “It is all in how you say it,” he agrees.

“Not all,” she cautions, “but a great deal of it. The words matter a great deal as well. Surely your brother taught you this – he was very good at choosing his words for effect.”

Thor shakes his head, amazed. No Avenger has ever – _ever_ – publicly admitted that Loki was particularly skilled at anything before. At least, not in his hearing. “I don’t know how,” he says aloud, still stunned.

“You’re going to be dealing with the media,” she tells him, “and they deal with words for a living, so they’re pretty good with them. But you grew up with Loki, so I’m pretty sure you can manage yourself well because of it. Choose your words carefully.”

“But what am I going to talk to them about?” he asks bluntly, the core of the problem.

She answers quickly. “About how committed you are to supporting the Fosters in the wake of this tragedy,” she prompts. “About how Stark Industries is going to start a foundation in Maddie’s memory, and about how there will be a toy drive this Christmas in her honor to raise awareness for missing and exploited children. About how even though it looks hopeless, your manager is letting you take a leave of absence to spend time with the Fosters, and how you’re going to be organizing a neighborhood search and never lose hope that someday, somehow, Maddie will be found alive and returned to her parents.”

“But that makes it sound like I think she’s already dead!” Thor protests.

Her voice is calm and terrible. “Exactly,” she says, suddenly so cold that Thor shudders.

“Why?” he asks, and his voice nearly cracks. “Why lie so completely to the world?”

“Because,” and now Natasha’s voice softens, “you’re Thor of the Avengers, and you’ll get the publicity. And the Fosters will play along if you ask them to, and when the media puts out all of this, the people behind the kidnapping will look at this and feel safe. They’ll think that if they’ve managed to fool you, an Avenger, then they’ve managed to fool everyone. They’ll stop worrying about being caught, and they won’t look for danger in their backyard. Clint and I will be able to slip right in, and they won’t be worried about a little extra attention if Bruce and Tony raise some alarms in their research.”

“A false sense of security,” Thor says, recalling the phrase and thinking it apt.

“Exactly.”

He thinks on it for a long moment. Finally, “You want someone with my brother’s talent,” he admits to her. “My paths have always lain elsewhere.”

“Maybe so,” she says unrepentantly, “but you’re the one we have in Seattle, and you can always give me a call if you’re worried about something.” 

It still worries him. “I do not want to tell such falsehoods,” he say, still troubled. “It’s not honorable. I do not want to lie and hold sway over others, to make them believe what I want. I do not want –” and his voice breaks before he can finish: _I do not want to wind up like my brother, to wield such influence over mortals and to misuse power so greatly._

Natasha is silent for a moment, for which he is grateful: it takes him a few seconds to regain his composure. Loki is his brother, and for all he did awful things it feels disloyal to denounce him, to admit to his errors.

“Thor,” Natasha says gently, “your hammer, Mjolnir – is it wrong if you were to use it to battle the men who did this to Maddie?”

“No.”

“And if you didn’t have Mjolnir, you’d use what – your fists?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re too far away to hit them,” she continues patiently, “and in either case, fists or hammer, they would see them coming and avoid you.” Her tone changes abruptly, becomes businesslike again. “In some cultures here, warriors used sharp needles as weapons. Do you have anything like that on Asgard?”

He easily makes the comparison with Fandral’s small, deadly knives. “Yes,” he tells her, and thinks he knows where she is going. He isn’t wrong.

“Are they any less honorable than your hammer?”

“No,” he admits, but then protests, “yet they are still open weapons, a known threat. Words are… subtle,” he decides, thinking of Loki’s sly insinuations. “They are not open and honorable.”

Natasha is silent for a long moment, and he can practically hear her thinking. Then she asks, “Are there bees on Asgard? Bumblebees, the kind with stingers. They make honey.”

“Yes,” he answers, and wonders at the new comparison.

“Think of words as bees,” she tells him. “They fly out into the world looking for flowers, and ignore you if you don’t harm them. They’re not dangerous on their own, and if you’re not looking for trouble, they pass you by. But if you anger them, or if you seek to harm them, a swarm can take you down.”

The comparison intrigues him despite his better judgment. “Bees,” he repeats, wonderingly.

Her voice is gentle. “You set them out, and they won’t hurt anyone who isn’t looking for trouble,” she says. “But if someone has the intention to harm – or here, if someone is looking to see a bit deeper into what’s going on – well, that’s when the stingers come out, and the swarm won’t let them get away with it.”

Thor paces up and down the little jetty. “I like that,” he says aloud after a moment, because to his surprise, he does, more than he might admit.

“So do I,” Natasha responds, and her can practically hear her smiling. “Do you think you can manage that, then?”

“Yes,” he says decisively. 

“Good. I’ll send you an email later tonight – well, this morning, I guess; it’s past midnight here – with the start of some ideas for you.” She pauses, and then adds carefully, “If you ever start to feel overwhelmed, let me know.”

“I will,” he promises, and she says good night to him with the same gravity.

Then, unexpectedly, she adds, “It’s all right to miss your brother, you know.”

She disconnects before he can ask her to explain. But her words ease his heartache, just a little. 

What Steve said earlier is true: shared blood doesn’t make a family. Thor is so far from his family – from his world – that the stars here don’t spin in the same patterns, and so he sometimes imagines his friends as a family. A strange, dysfunctional family; he’ll be the first to admit that. But a family, in some ways. Not everyone is defined: Tony is neither uncle nor brother nor father, really, and he can’t really pinpoint a relation for Bruce or Clint either. Shield-brothers, maybe, but even that isn’t quite right.

Steve is easy enough to typecast as an older brother, and Thor is pleased with that explanation. But Natasha – Natasha just reminds him of Loki. 

He’d never tell her, of course, but sometimes she will say something under her breath, caustic or long-suffering or witty or all three, and it’s the same tone Loki would use. She has the same exasperated faces, the same mischievous streak, even the same talent with words and misdirection. She changes personas the way Loki changes faces, and it hurts, sometimes, to watch her use that skill, because it reminds him of growing up with Loki on Asgard, the way Loki used to be. And Natasha, with the same skills and the same talents and the same ruthless practicality, is everything Loki could have been: so close and so similar, and yet so different from what Loki chose that it hurts Thor’s chest sometimes to watch her work.

And now she is passing on a task that would suit her talents perfectly – suit Loki’s talents perfectly – to a man more comfortable in battle. 

Thor ends the call on his phone, and for a moment, looks at his finger on the screen. His hands are large, the fingers wide and blunt, the palms creased and scarred and calloused. His are the hands of a warrior, awkwardly holding a tiny piece of sleek technology, and his are hands that will go to war for a little girl by remaining empty at his sides.

He turns to begin the run back to the hotel. Words are not his natural choice of weapon in this war. Bees, he reminds himself, and considers Natasha’s analogy again. He likes the idea. Bees are benign: humble, hard workers, roused only in defense of self and hive. Mjolnir was designed for peace as well as war, to build and defend, and Thor has no objection to preparing himself for this war like a small bumblebee.

Natasha’s bees are spiders, he decides whimsically: a bit sleeker, a bit darker, far better directed and far more dangerous. She uses words as Loki did, with no hammer to fall back on if success is uncertain, and she’s honed her words into dark and dangerous spiders to poison her enemies. Loki’s words, Thor thinks, are locusts: at times they are hidden away, slumbering and peaceful. But when the locusts rouse – when Loki sets his talent and his ambitions loose – they can consume everything before them.

Thor is content to have his words act as bees, passive unless threatened. He will stay in Seattle, and speak as Natasha suggests, and set swarms of bees upon the media. He will lull his enemies into thinking themselves safe with the drowsy effects of honey, and when the time is right he will abandon tiny bees and small stingers for the might of Mjolnir. He will call forth the lightning to sear those who dare destroy families and make children unhappy.

And maybe, maybe, next time he returns home, he will visit his brother, and tell him of stolen children and bees and the justice he will mete upon those responsible for the misery of families.

Thor thinks Loki will approve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I'm sure you have noticed, my posting has caught up with my writing. I will continue to post chapters as soon as they are completed; I am sorry that the posting schedule will no longer be as rapid as it was at the beginning.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and especially to those who have left reviews. I am very glad that so many of you are enjoying the fic!
> 
> And my undying gratitude to whomever recommended this fic on tvtropes. One of my life goals was to someday achieve being mentioned somewhere on that site, and I was thrilled to find out that someone thought this fic worthy enough of being recommended there.


	11. Section Two: Clint

# -Clint-

SHIELD is remarkably skilled at turning one person into someone else entirely. 

The first step, of course, is to erase the agent who will play the part. No competing records are left to muddy the waters, no false trails, no hints of anything beyond what SHIELD wants to be found. But agents trusted to go into deep cover rarely have trails to hide in the first place: if they’ve been trusted this far, odds are good that SHIELD has already claimed their old lives and discarded any traces of who they once were. Agents can’t have traceable history, after all – a traceable history means that they have a past that might compete with SHIELD for attention, and SHIELD agents who insist on holding on to their past generally don’t make good undercover operators.

News articles, high school transcripts, college courses, past jobs, even government IDs and records come next – the paper trail can be created and laid with such care that even other agents will have a hard time digging deep enough to determine that they are fake. That’s the easy part, of course, creating the physical and digital evidence of a life. The harder part, inventing the life itself, is left to SHIELD’s psychological profilers: they create a personality out of thin air, pull elements of a history that never happened together to make an individual who never existed real and solid. More, they seed the background as they build it, layer by fertile layer, with little tidbits of experiences designed to intrigue and ensnare the target, as the mission demands. An otherwise typical intern might have a deep and abiding love for opera, if the target keeps a pair of season tickets; a target with a love of baseball might be given an aide who has a family connection with his favorite team. It’s tricky, to layer interests and ideas nonchalantly in a way that targets won’t suspect, but the profilers are good at it.

Each deep cover profile is a work of psychological art as much as it is an epic work of fiction: a true individual, a character created out of nothing with a past and a present and motivations for the future. More, each deep cover profile is an illusion, a pretty package containing secret pockets of personality and past designed to intrigue and ensnare the target, hints to tantalize the target into trust, desire, dependency, and complacency. Each profile is a time bomb wrapped in shiny agent packaging, and every agent trusted to assume another name is skilled at hiding the danger they conceal until it is too late to escape.

The SHIELD psychologists who work as profilers do their jobs well, if impassively. So handlers tweak, ever so gently, the stories and fictions the psychologists create, and the final version is given to the Records Office even as the handlers groom their agents for the part. The Records Office creates the paperwork that document life, from birth certificates to job histories to tax records, crafting a mountain of files sturdy enough to withstand serious digging. The handlers send the agent out to learn to live and act in character, to take classes as necessary and gain skills as required, and arrange for the photo shoots needed to build a pictorial history of a life that never happened. Photo records are scattered across time, in handmade photo albums to sit on shelves, in newspaper articles that were never published and archives people might never look at, on internet sites and in old yearbook pages.

Depending on the skill levels of all involved, a single deep cover assignment could take anywhere from years to weeks to set up and implement.

It takes SHIELD four days to rewrite two lives to better fit what they know as Operation Normandy. 

It should have taken far longer: building an entwined backstory takes more effort than creating a single cover, and rewriting is always worrisome. But when Tony Stark himself authorizes any necessary overtime and expenses from his own budget, well, SHIELD’s not above greasing as many wheels as necessary to make things happen.

Besides, Clint thinks with pride, he and Natasha are notoriously good at handling last-minute changes to cover stories, and in fact at least two of their prior assignments are now case studies for new profiles. He’s fairly sure that he and Natasha are, themselves, case studies – for either the profilers, the handlers, or both, he’s not entirely certain. But the fact remains that they’re good at this, and have been working with each other for too long for it to be anything but natural to slip into his role beside her.

So Clint puts on Colin’s wedding ring and demeanor, and Natasha wears Natalie’s jewelry and a slightly hopeful smile, and they direct the moving truck up to the house now in their names and unpack belongings they’ve never seen before to make the house fully theirs.

“I’m going to change my last name,” Natasha tells him, filling out paperwork as they eat dinner between unpacking boxes. 

“Yeah?” Clint asks around a bite of teriyaki noodles. “Why?”

She shrugs. “It seems like she’d want to,” she explains. “Tradition, and all that – the kids would be Boyds, right, and if she’s all about the kids wouldn’t she want to be one too to have that connection to them?”

Clint just shrugs. She’d been turned into Natalie Rushman long before he’d been Colin Boyd; adding their marriage into the mix years later, she’d kept her significant initials and her surname. It hadn’t been a problem, after all – Natalie was a working professional and established in her field, so changing her name with marriage would have meant losing contacts and recognition. 

Now, though, Natalie is focusing on family, and Clint does admit that he can see the logic in it. “You’re going to play that up for all it’s worth, aren’t you?” he asks, and her eyes glint with amusement.

So she spends time in Omaha’s courthouse, wading through the paperwork required, and Colin treats her to dinner at the local country club once everything’s official. Tony had been the one to see about gaining them membership – “It’s the least I can do, since I the one sending you out to the middle of nowhere,” he’d joked.

Clint doesn’t consider Omaha the middle of nowhere. To his small-town Iowa roots, Omaha’s a fairly major city: smaller than New York or Seattle, of course, but still vibrant, full of industry and energy. Vibrant enough for Stark Industries to have a small, localized factory here, one that needs a new head of security.

It’s almost like a play, in a way. Clint slips into Colin and Natasha pulls on Natalie like a dress, and each time they venture out of the house it’s like stepping out onto a stage. Sometimes they’re only extras: they grocery shop and buy furniture for the house and eat lunch together. 

But sometimes they’re playing starring roles: Colin admires the family pictures kept by his new right-hand man; Natalie emerges in tears from a specialist’s office near the hospital; they go together to the motorcycle shop to debate which models to buy.

They’ve been in town for sixteen days – Maddie has been missing for twenty-one – before they officially meet their targets.

The country club is undeniably swanky: there’s a dress code, for one, so Clint is wearing a suit and tie, and Natasha is frankly stunning in a slinky green sheath. The staff all wear pressed black pants and crisp white button-down shirts; there are candles on every table, and a six-piece band playing music beside the dance floor. The food, when it comes, arrives carefully arranged and artfully posed on fine china, and between courses, most of the guests either dance or circulate with each other, sipping carefully from delicate crystal wine glasses.

Steve, Clint thinks with a smile he directs at Natasha, would love it. 

She smiles back at him, and her eyes flicker over his shoulder, and her smile grows. “I think we should have champagne tonight,” she says simply, and he raises his hand to flag down a waiter.

Since they’re ostensibly celebrating, they sip champagne and laugh and chat and play the devoted couple through most of dinner. They dance between courses – Natasha dances beautifully, of course, and he took lessons eight or nine years ago for a mission to Argentina so he’s fairly passable as well, and they make a good couple out on the floor.

She’s laughing as they return to the table, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright, and when she reaches for her glass of champagne, she tosses it back without regard for the quality. “I’ll be right back,” she promises him, and kisses his cheek as she slinks off towards the women’s restroom.

That’s his cue, he knows. So he leans back in his chair, a man perfectly content with the world, orders another bottle of champagne, and very carefully times his next move. 

A tall man in a grey suit is walking behind him: he’s middle-aged, with more grey than black in his hair, and a neatly trimmed beard. He has the kind of face, Clint thinks, that belongs in a commercial about kindly doctors recommending a brand of toothpaste over another, and on that thought, he swipes a piece of ice from his water before someone notices what he’s doing.

It’s child’s play to toss the ice behind him at the right angle, and fairly easy to time it so that the movement is blocked by the waiter bringing out their dessert. The ice skids just a little on the dance floor, and comes to a stop the instant before the suited man’s impeccably shod foot steps down onto it.

The man’s foot slides out from under him; the man lurches forward to catch his balance, the blonde at his side gasping and reaching out to help him. But it’s a wasted effort: the man skids forward and crashes head-first into the waiter’s back. The waiter is pushed forward as well, in a comic domino, and Colin and Natalie’s dessert is flung from his tray into Clint’s chest as both waiter and suited gentleman collapse in a tangle of limbs onto the floor.

It’s a commotion big enough that even the band pauses in the middle of their song. Other diners titter and turn back to their food, and waiters materialize from nowhere to run forward to assist.

“Aaron!” the blonde is gasping, in some distress. “Oh, Aaron, are you all right? What happened?”

The man is picking himself up, rather gingerly, and even as he offers a hand to the still-sprawled waiter, he chuckles ruefully. “I’m just fine, Shelly,” he says, and then, “Here you are, man, come on up,” he adds, and helps haul up the waiter. “I must have slipped on something – feet just went straight out from under me. Hope I didn’t knock you too hard… oh, _damn_ ,” he swears, as the waiter stands and he sees Clint scraping chocolate cake from his front. 

Clint looks up. “No, no,” he starts, “it’s all right, really –”

And, just beautifully in time, he hears Natasha’s worried voice. “Colin? Oh, Colin, what happened?” She darts across the dance floor to come to his side, and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Oh, what a mess.”

“My extreme apologies,” Aaron says, and he does look distressed – the blonde at his side, too, looks desperately embarrassed. “Please, allow us to buy you drinks and dessert – I can’t believe I did this.”

“No, it’s all right,” Clint insists, and takes off his suit jacket to better stare at the mess of chocolate stains on his shirt. “It could have happened to anyone.”

“Really,” the blonde chimes in, “we’re so sorry. Please let us make it up to you.”

By now the dining room’s manager has arrived as well, and as the older couple explain just what happened, she shakes her head. “We’ll replace your dessert, of course,” she says to Clint. “And please, don’t worry about your meal tonight. I can’t believe something like this could happen.”

“It wasn’t their fault at all,” Clint protests. “There must have been something dropped on the floor. He must have slipped.”

The ice cube has long since melted, of course, but there is a slick little puddle of water, and this discovery leads to the manager’s great indignation. 

“Still,” Aaron insists, and claps a kind hand down on Clint’s shoulder. “After ruining your night, I insist: let my wife and I buy you drinks to cap off your evening. It’s the least we can do.”

“It’s all right,” Clint still tries to insist, and so Natasha takes his hand and offers the older couple a trembling smile. 

“That’s very kind of you,” she says, and squeezes Clint’s hand, as if in warning. “But only if you’ll join us. It wasn’t your fault you fell, not with something on the floor.”

So the manager scurries to have more chairs brought to the cozy little table, and their waiter quickly returns, shamefaced, with the champagne they’d ordered before the entire fiasco.

“We’re celebrating, a bit,” Natasha explains with just the hint of a blush on her face, as Shelly glances a bit quizzically at the champagne.

“Oh? What’s the occasion?”

“Well…” And she glances at Clint, smiles. “We’ve been married a few years, and today I finally finished all of my name change paperwork. So it’s my first night as Mrs. Boyd.”

“Congratulations!” Aaron says sincerely. He holds out a hand. “I’m Aaron Field, and this is my wife Shelly. You’re new here, aren’t you? We’ve been members for almost thirty years, and I don’t recognize you.”

Clint laughs. “New enough,” he admits, and shakes Aaron’s hand. “Colin Boyd, my wife Natalie. We’ve been visiting here for a few years, but my transfer just came through permanently, and we’ve just moved out full time.”

“Oh?” Shelly perks up. “Where are you two from?”

So they spin a careful web of lies, explaining their false background and their fake histories, laughing and chatting over the champagne and chocolate until the candle at the center of their table dims and flickers out. They move seamlessly from past to present, and so Clint casually mentions his love of motorcycles, Natasha her determination to join the health club, and the hours slip by in conversation designed to entice.

“My goodness, look at the time,” Shelly exclaims at long last, looking down at the slender, diamond-studded watch on her wrist. “Aaron, we really ought to be going…”

Aaron sighs, and glances back at Clint. “We should really get together again,” he enthuses. “The weather’s too bad for a ride, of course, but you should come over to see my Harley one of these days. In fact,” and he tilts his head, “we’re having a dinner party later this week, and one of our other couples dropped out – if you don’t mind being a last-minute replacement, we’d love to invite you over.”

“Oh, of course!” Shelly beams at the idea and turns to Natasha. “One of the other ladies there, Marissa, she and I go together to the health club on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’d love to have you join us tomorrow – it would give you a chance to meet her before Saturday.”

“I’d love to,” Natalie exclaims, and so Colin accepts the invitation to dinner Saturday, bills are paid, and they leave the club together to drift towards their separate cars.

“Remember, tomorrow at eleven!” Shelly calls to Natasha as she enters her car, and they all wave goodbye.

They drive back to the house that is now theirs in silence, and only once they are upstairs in the master bedroom does Clint speak.

“They weren’t too bad, for evil kid-stealing masterminds,” he says, undoing his tie.

Natasha rolls her eyes and kicks off high heels. “That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” she asks him, and turns to present her back. “Here, undo me.”

He fumbles at the zipper until it slides smoothly down her back. “When do you want to hook them in with the real story?” he asks as he finishes.

She shrugs, and the dress drops to her feet as her shoulders move. “I’ll start tomorrow,” she tells him, and bends to pick up and hang the green dress. “If I do it right, I’ll play Shelly just fine, and she’ll take it to her husband. She’s the emotional one, I think – he’ll be the one to do the digging, to make sure, before anything else happens.”

He considers Natasha’s point as he unbuttons his shirt and pulls it off. It’s horribly stained with chocolate, of course, but it was for a good cause. “She’ll play mother, if that’s the case,” he points out, and dumps the shirt into the laundry basket.

Natasha picks it up and moves it into a trash bin. “That’ll be fine,” she agrees. “But it means that Aaron’s going to be the one calling the shots.”

He just shrugs, pulls off his undershirt. “Bug the house on Saturday?”

“Yes.” She slips on her pajamas. “I’m going to have to take the story slow,” she cautions him. “Too much at once is suspicious.”

He knows that as well as she does, so he doesn’t reply. “You’re going to have to be the solid one,” she continues, after a pause where she removes her bracelet and tucks it into a box on the dresser. “Especially if they get ears in here somewhere.”

She pulls off the diamonds glittering against her neck. “I can manage that,” he says quietly, leaning against the wall to watch her.

She looks back at him as she takes off her earrings. “Yes,” she says with the faintest of smiles – her slight smiles, he knows, are the most honest. “I know.”

She sleeps quietly, self-contained and separate on her half of the bed. Sometimes, after a bad nightmare, she wakes and reaches for him; most of the time, she shivers her way through them alone. Clint doesn’t like to see her suffer, and so he’s grown used to waking when she starts to shake, and she’s grown used to waking wrapped in his arms because of it.

For two people who have shared so much history, so much blood, so many words, it’s a little strange that they’ve never really talked about those quiet, comforting moments in the dark. She never thanks him, and he never asks permission, but she stops trembling in her sleep when he touches her, and that’s all the incentive Clint needs to sleep lightly.

They don’t ever mention the contact in the morning, when they disentangle casually, practiced and used to the movements of each other’s bodies, to dress and go on with their day. Clint sometimes thinks he should ask her about it, press for details or an explanation or even just permission to continue touching her the next time it happens. But he doesn’t, and he can’t quite explain why. Anyways, in the grand scheme of things, he thinks it’s a little stupid to worry about what she thinks of the contact, considering that they were handcuffed together naked for close to forty-two hours during that disastrous mission in Yekaterinburg in ’08.

So when Natasha shivers her way through sleep Thursday night, Clint rolls over to hold her and runs his hands slowly up and down her back until her tremors stop. She eases back into calmer sleep, and Clint tucks his head over her riot of curling hair and sleeps himself.

Dinner Saturday goes well enough: there are three other couples, all a bit older, who all welcome the Boyds warmly and go out of their way to include them in the conversation around the Fields’s dining room table.

The opening, when it comes, is perfect.

“You’ll have to let me show you the pictures Jasmine sent,” one of the other ladies is telling Shelly, the end of a very long story about how perfect her grandchildren are. “They’re simply adorable.” And she laughs, turns back to the rest of the table. “Well, you’ve certainly let me ramble on enough about my babies… How about you, my dear?” And she turns to the woman she knows as Natalie Boyd. “You’re young yet – any babies planned for down the road?”

It’s such a perfect set-up that Clint can barely believe it. Natasha, however, rolls with it perfectly: her expression shifts, just subtly, and she pulls her napkin up out of her lap. “Excuse me,” she says in a voice choked thick with tears, and her hands tremble as she pushes herself up away from the table. “I’m sorry, excuse me.” And she bites her lip, her eyes fill with tears, and as the first spills over her cheek, she turns and flees down the hall.

“Oh, dear,” the woman whispers, horrified. “Oh, I am so sorry.” The entire dinner party sits in shock around her, and Clint steps into action.

“Excuse me,” Clint says quickly, and stands, lets his voice carry just a bit. “Natalie, wait…”

Natasha has locked herself in the bathroom at the end of the hall, so Clint plays the devoted, concerned husband and calls to her through the door. “Natalie?”

“I’ll be fine,” she says, and it sounds like she crying. “I’ll be fine.”

Clint rests his head against the door, hears someone come up behind him. “Nat, I can take you home,” he offers.

“I just need a minute,” she says, and he hears her gulp for breath. “I’ll be just a minute.”

A gentle hand rests on his shoulder. “Will she be all right?” Aaron asks, and the concern in his voice is quiet and genuine.

Clint takes a deep, even breath, and straightens. “I’m sorry,” he says to his host, and lifts his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry. She’ll be fine – it’s just…” He lets his voice falter, crack, and he swallows and looks away, as if ashamed. “It’s a bit of a difficult subject.”

Aaron squeezes his shoulder, and then releases it. “I understand,” he says softly, and there’s something in his eyes that speaks to the truth in the words. “Is there anything I can get for her?”

Clint shakes his head, shuts his eyes tight. “No,” he says, and opens his eyes to offer Aaron a strained smile. “She’ll be all right in a minute,” he offers. “I didn’t want to disrupt the dinner party.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the older man says with an understanding smile. “Just rejoin us whenever you’re ready.” He goes back to the dining room, and after a few seconds, Clint hears him offer a quiet explanation, and subdued voices start up again.

“Natalie?” Clint calls again, quieter.

The door opens, and Natasha steps out to join him in the hallway. She does vulnerable very well: it’s something of a specialty for her. It’s one reason why she was originally paired with him – he can be solid, and she can be shaky, and between them they get the information they need. So he puts his arms around her and holds her for a few minutes, while she sniffs into his shirt and cries just a bit, and he does he very best to ignore how familiar and easy this whole scenario is for him to manage.

Still, he holds her hand when they return to the dining room, and when the lady apologizes profusely to Natasha for whatever she said, he lets Natasha handle things. 

“No, I’m sorry,” she says, with a smile that is both sweet and tremulous. “We just – just had some bad news a few weeks ago, and I’m afraid I overreacted.” And she takes a deep breath, and very obviously changes the subject. “Shelly, I saw a lovely painting in the bathroom – was that part of the collection you mentioned on Thursday?”

The rest of the evening is uneventful, just as planned, and when the Fields see them to the door, no mention is made of Natalie’s loss of composure. Instead, Shelly kisses her cheek, gives her a hug, and demands to see her on Tuesday at the health club, and Aaron shakes Clint’s hand, and, with a thoughtful light in his eye, adds, “And swing by Wednesday like we talked about, why don’t you? I’ll show you my Harley.”

It’s a quiet weekend, but reports quietly arrive: someone is checking into their backgrounds, and their stories are holding. Finally, Wednesday afternoon, running paperwork in the office, Clint’s phone rings.

“Colin Boyd,” he answers, and there’s a quiet chuckle from the other end.

“You were right,” Nick Fury says. “He checked Dr. Lawson,” he adds, and hangs up.

Clint puts his phone away with a smile, remembering the gleam in Aaron’s eye as he left on Saturday.

He goes to the Field house after work, as he promised, and Aaron is there to show him his obviously well-loved Harley-Davidson. Clint admires the bike dutifully, and because he does like motorcycles even if he prefers other manufacturers, he gladly accepts a beer from the older man and the invitation to sit around and debate the merits of various engines.

Finally, Aaron sets his beer aside. “How’s Natalie doing?” he asks, and there’s that little gleam again in his eye, the tell Clint had been waiting for. “Shelly’s been so worried. She wanted to ask yesterday when they were at the health club, but wasn’t sure if she ought to bring it up.”

Clint sighs, puts down his own beer. “She’s okay,” he says, and stands to pace a bit. “It’s just – kids are a bit of a sore spot, at the moment.”

Aaron watches him carefully, and then picks up his beer. “Want to talk about it?” he offers blandly.

_Mistake number one_ , Clint thinks gleefully: what guy in his right mind would want to open up to a promising acquaintance of only a week and have a deep discussion?

But instead, he simply hesitates, and then says, “When we got married, we decided we were going to try for kids right away.” He gestures at himself. “I mean, Natalie’s still young, and I’m not that much older than her, but still, we figured, hey, why not.” He looks down, grabs at his beer. “After a year or two and nothing, we went in for some testing. I checked out, but Natalie…” He drinks again.

“That’s rough,” Aaron admits. “Terry felt so bad for bringing it up. I told her that it’s impossible to tell what’s going on just by looking at someone, and she shouldn’t feel bad, but…”

“No, it’s okay,” Clint says, and gives a small, tight smile. “We’re okay with it, mostly, but it’s just…” He hesitates again, drinks. “I don’t want to bother you with all this.”

“Colin,” Aaron chastises gently. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to hear it.”

“Right. Well.” He looks at his beer bottle. “We looked into doing an adoption, right before we moved out here,” he blurts. “I mean, Omaha would be a great place for a kid, right? So we talked with Mr. Stark about a permanent transfer, and he was glad to help – you know he and Ms. Potts are getting older, and can’t have kids of their own, so I think he was happy, you know, to see us going through with the idea of adoption, because they might want to do it themselves someday. So they helped us with some of the payments, even, and they got us on a list for immediate adoption.” He takes a deep breath. “We were going to get a little girl. The mom was just sixteen, wanted to give her up and finish high school. Natalie got so excited – planned out the whole nursery, went and bought baby clothes, the whole thing. We were going to meet her the week before we moved – Ms. Potts threw her a baby shower, did you know?”

“What happened?” Aaron asks into Colin’s bitter silence.

He throws the beer bottle into the corner of the garage, where it shatters. “The mom backed out. Decided at the last minute she was going to keep the baby, that she didn’t want to give her up. Natalie was devastated.” He shuts his eyes tight, takes a deep breath, opens his eyes, and swears. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make a mess in your garage.”

Aaron waves the apology away. “You needed to vent,” he says quietly. “I can see why you’re upset.”

Clint scrubs his hands over his face. “Yeah, well,” he says bitterly. “That’s just life, I guess. It’s just…” He lets his voice break, lets himself sound tired. “We were so close, you know? So close. Natalie wanted to name her Alice, said next time we could try to adopt a boy for me to take camping. Now she doesn’t even want to think about trying again after this.”

It’s a tangled mess of a cover, Clint knows, seeded with intriguing little bits to reach out and snag the interest of a man tempted by money and power. There are spiderweb lies, sticky with false hope and believable records behind them to prove it, and if Aaron checked with Dr. Lawson, then he’s already been fed even more fabrications: Natalie’s infertility records and Colin’s pay rate, how helpful Tony Stark’s money was in smoothing a path to a quick adoption, how genuinely the Boyds hope for children.

Still, as tangled and wild as the cover is, it’s up to Clint and Natasha to sell it as truth. Everything comes down to their acting, to how believable they can make the untrue sound. 

Aaron pauses for a long moment, as though he’s warring with himself, and finally says, “Colin, do you know what I do for a living?”

Clint sighs, shakes his head. “I don’t think it’s come up,” he says, because it hasn’t, and he leans against the workbench.

“Colin,” Aaron says, taking the bait with that dangerous glimmer of interest in his eyes, “I run an adoption agency. And I think I can help you and Natalie.”


	12. Author's Note: An Apology

To the many readers who very kindly left me kudos and comments on this fic:

I apologize that this fic has been abandoned for so long. To be honest, my life grew very complicated at the point I stopped writing, and once those complications cleared, I found myself unable to complete the story.

I feel like I should have made that clear long ago: I hate as much as any of you when a promising fic is simply abandoned, with no notice and no explanation. For the delay and for the abandonment itself, you have my sincere apologies.

I will likely never return to this fic. While I remain very proud of it - both the idea and the execution - I feel like the time for it has, frankly, passed. This was written immediately after the Avengers: since then, there have been numerous movie sequels and television shows continuing the story this was meant to prolong. I have not watched all of these, nor have I honestly liked some of the ones that I have seen. Age of Ultron did many things well, but ruined many other parts of what drew me towards playing with these characters: in how they related to each other, in their interactions, in their motivation. While perhaps I would have continued this had the fandom/canon not moved on... my life caused me to step back, and by the time I was ready to return, I was no longer playing in quite the same sandbox.

I am also no longer quite the same author I was when I began writing this. Since my abrupt departure, I have changed jobs, moved, married, and become a mother. It is hard - remarkably, unbelievably hard - for me to now consider children in peril, which is a key point of this story. It is emotionally draining, terrifying in an urgent, instant type of way that I simply could never have imagined when I first wrote this fic. Seriously, hormones and all that fluff about how you'll learn to love your own children - they ain't joking about that. What they don't tell you is that the terror of imagining something going wrong with your baby is so visceral that it sometimes requires you step back from even imaginary situations (don't even get me started on watching the news).

So I am sorry, but this is a note to let you all know that this fic will, in all probability, never be updated again. 

Thank you for the constructive criticism and the reviews. This fic helped me become a better author, and I truly, deeply appreciate everyone who left comments, kudos, and questions for me.

I am vastly humbled that so many of you enjoyed this. This was the first anything that I had ever written in this fandom, and is my only fic to ever achieve a recommendation on tvtropes, which I am immensely proud of. Thank you for your encouragement, your support, and your understanding; I do regret being unable to finish what I started.


End file.
